


No Way Home

by Flagg1991



Category: The Loud House (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-04 16:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 76,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18346976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flagg1991/pseuds/Flagg1991
Summary: Alcoholic Lemy Loud returns home to Royal Woods, Michigan, after several years to attempt reconciliation with his family.





	1. The Call

Lemy Loud came sharply awake to the sound of voices, his eyes flying open and his heart seizing in his chest. Oh, shit, he thought, the landlord.

He lived on the third floor of a crumbling tenament on the corner of West Ave and 54th Street, the kind of place with a grimey brick facade, wide windows, and dirty hallways littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans, and condom wrappers. His landlord, a perpetually glowering Arab man named Abdul, liked to come in unannounced - he figured hey, it's my building, fuck you. Funny, he came right in without so much as a knock, but he was never there when you needed him to fix something.

Since he was behind on his rent, Abdul was one of the last people Lemy wanted to fuck with. He sat up, and his head spun, his stomach going with it; the taste of old beer filled his mouth and for a second he thought he was going to puke.

"...after police say she, get this, shot her husband...for snoring."

Huh?

A woman laughed. "Snoring? Really?"

"58-year-old Debbie Hicks of Armand, Kentucky, shot her husband, 63-year-old Dale Hicks, over the weekend and told police she did it because his snoring was quote unquote driving me crazy."

Lemy existed in a perpetual haze of drugs, alcohol, and regret, but he'd never been more confused in his life. Who was in his apartment? He started to get up, wishing he had a gun, then his eyes fell on the clock radio staring back at him from the top of his dresser. 4:30pm.

"I'll say," the woman replied, her voice filtering through the speaker, "my husband snores loud, but I wouldn't kill him. I'd just make him sleep on the couch."

The man laughed, and Lemy did too. Every day he did this. Fuck, I'm being robbed and...oh wait, it's just The Jackson O'Brien Show on 106.7 WRFK.

Shifting out of bed, Lemy got to his feet and stretched - he was naked save for the same dirty jeans he wore yesterday and a sweat soaked red bandana tied around his forehead. He forgot to take it off most nights since he was usually busy being drunk, so it, like the jeans, tended to just...stay on.

Kicking through empty Natty Ice cans, he went into the living room/kitchen, a tiny space with sticky tile floors and food splattered walls. Roaches scurried out of his path and a rat slipped through a crack in the wall. Lemy called him Winslow after the rat in CatDog. He crossed to the counter, grabbed his Newports, and lit one, the smoke rolling into his lungs and pinching the back of his throat. Next, he hit the bathroom, took a fat I-drank-too-much-last-night piss, then snatched a tallboy from the fridge. He cracked it and leaned against the counter as Jackson and Maureen went off the air, replaced by distorted guitar and organs. Lemy took a long drink and shuffled over to the front window; beads of rain sluiced down the pane, and more hissed in the street below, leaves and bits of litter rushing in streams along the gutters

Of course it was raining. It does nothing but rain in this fucking city. It's worse than London and Seattle combined.

Did he still have that umbrella hanging around? He threw his head back in thought but couldn't remember.

He took the beer into his room and looked around, but didn't see it. It was closing in on five and he had to get ready for work. Fuck it. He'd just get wet.

Setting the can on the dresser, he opened the top drawer, grabbed a pair of green socks, then sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them on, followed by his boots: Brown, dirty, and falling apart. Hey, just like him. Except the brown part.

Chuckling sardonically, he got up, grabbed a black T-shirt from the dresser, and yanked it over his head; his nose pinched when he caught a whiff of his armpits and he gagged. "Oh, yuck." He didn't have time for a shower, though - he was gonna be late as it was.

He picked his green military coat up off the floor, shrugged into it, and left the apartment, locking the door behind him. The hall was dim and trashy; the smell of cooking drifted out from a dozen apartments and combined with the stench of mold and mildew, forming something truly fucking ratchet. Zipping up his coat, he shoved his hands into his pockets and went down the stairs, passing a big blonde girl with vibrant green eyes. "Hey," she said happily.

"Hey," Lemy muttered and kept going. Her name was Candy...or that's what she went by at any rate. She lived on the fifth floor, and for a hundred bucks she'd let you fuck her. An extra fifty, and she'd let you go in raw. She usually gave him a discount because she liked him. You're a nice guy, she said once. Hahahaha. Honey, if only you knew. Of course, she was probably judging him against her pimps/boyfriends, in which case, yeah, he probably was: He was into a lot of things, but slapping women around wasn't one of them.

In the lobby, he stopped to check his mail. Junk, junk, turn off notice from the power company, junk, junk, medical bill that wasn't going to get paid any time soon, junk. He shoved it back into the slot, locked the little door, and went out into the cold rain, his head bowing.

The bus stop was three blocks north on the corner of West and Central. By the time he got there, he was going to be soaked. Fucking bullshit; it always did this to him. There was a saying: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. That applied to him in every way, shape, and form - his life was a long string of failures, disasters, regrets, and buttfucking. Metaphorical buttfucking, but sometimes, he'd prefer the real thing. At least a rapist eventually goes away, the universe doesn't, and if it hates you, you're in a for a shitshow of a time. The universe hated him. He didn't know why, but, eh, he was used to it by now.

A block and a half from the stop, he caught sight of the bus sailing by. What? I'm early!

That's when he remembered the clock in his room was ten minutes slow.

Just as it had been for weeks.

Damning himself as a fool, he started to run, the soles of his boots slapping the concrete and splashing in muddy puddles. Please wait, please wait, please wait! He rounded the corner just as it pulled away from the curb. Shit! He ran faster, waving his hands and yelling "Hey! Wait!" like a maniac.

He didn't know if the driver saw him or not, but if he did, he ignored him. Lemy came to a stop, panting, and growled as hot rage detonate in his chest. He lashed out and kicked an overfull metal trash can so hard it dented, and threw his elbow against a NO PARKING SIGN, making it quiver with a low thrum. Goddamn it! The next bus wasn't for forty-five-fucking minutes and if he wasn't at work in fifteen minutes, Elise the security guard was going to bitch to his boss.

With a heavy sigh, Lemy put his hands on his hips and stared down at the slick pavement. Well, this was nice. Sean, his boss, already wasn't happy with his work. We're getting too many complaints, what's going on over there? It wasn't him! They were just too fucking nitpicky. And even Sean admitted Elsie was a crazy bitch - no one liked her. Hell, what do these people want, their building to be completely spotless? Maybe they shouldn't be such fucking slobs. It wasn't his fault. He left the front door unlocked one night and now they were walking around looking for a reason to be mad.

Fuck them.

And fuck that bus.

He went into the shelter and sat down,

Then his Tracfone rang.

Oh, God, what fresh hell is this?

He whipped it out, opened it, and pressed it to his ear, ready for a fight. "Yeah?"

"Lemy," a firm, familiar voice said. Sharp. Like an accusation.

No, that can't be…

He already knew that it was.

Fuck. How did he get his number?

Hanging his head, Lemy drew a deep breath. "Hey, Dad."

"I need to ask you something," Dad said curtly, ignoring his greeting. That didn't surprise Lemy. He never got along with his old man; he thought he was better than everyone else. Mr. Middle Class, Lemy called him; it's always the little guys who are really stuck up. Once you got so much money, you just stop because whatever. The guys like Dad, though, the keeping up with the Jones BS motherfuckers, are all in your face with what they have and what they think of people like you.

Four years ago, Dad finally, thankfully, kicked him out of the house and told him to "Stay away from my family." Pfft. Guy acted like he never saw a meth lab before. Hahahaha.

Only four people had his number, one was Mom, but he doubted she would give it to him; she left his ass two years ago and moved to Portland. Said she couldn't take him anymore.

"What's up?" Lemy asked, already knowing.

"You never sent me back that paperwork. Do you still have it?"

Lemy sighed. No, he didn't; he lost it when he moved out of the motel room he lived in last winter. "I misplaced it," Lemy said.

Dad sighed in frustration. "I told you how important it was, I told you to get it back to me in less than a week. All you had to do was sign your name. What, you couldn't even manage that? Your name has eight letters. L-E-M-Y L-O-U-D. It shouldn't have taken you even a week to do it, but I know you, so I gave you ample time."

This is why he didn't want Dad having his number. Dad said he knew him, well...he knew Dad too; he held the phone away from his ear and rubbed his grainy eyes. Dad squaked and squaked and squaked. Ugh. "...sign this paperwork."

"What?" Lemy asked.

Dad snorted. "You weren't listening, were you? I said you need to get your ass out here and sign this paperwork."

Lemy had had enough. "Or what?"

"Or I'll sick my lawyer on you, that's what."

Lemy laughed out loud, a deep, genuine, from-the-gut belly laugh that turned passing heads. "What's your lawyer gonna do to me? I don't have shit."

"You'll go to jail," Dad snarled, "get your ass out here and sign this paperwork. You can stay at the house, and if your nose is clean, we can talk about you moving back out here. Not into my home, but somewhere."

"Yeah, okay," Lemy said, "I'm walking into work. Gotta go." He closed the phone and shoved it into his pocket; cars sped by in the street, kicking up sheets of mist.

If Abdul was one of the last people on earth Lemy wanted to fuck with, Lincoln Loud was the last. And that fucking paperwork...yeah, Lemy agreed to it, but now he was having second thoughts. He knew he was a piece of shit, but signing those forms...that was the point of no return. In more ways than one.

That paperwork Dad sent him last year...yeah, he didn't really lose it. He signed it...then ripped it up and threw it away.

He sighed and held his face in his hands.

He really, really didn't want to sign it, though he probably should.

I'll put it off, he thought.

Mind made up, he waited for the bus.

***

Lincoln Loud, clad in a white polo shirt and black slacks, laid the phone in the cradle and leaned back from the gleaming oaken desk, his hands coming to rest on the arms of the plush leather chair in which he sat. A look of distaste pinched his wrinkled features, and he drew a long, slow breath through flaring nostrils, then let it out in a rush.

It was just past 4 in the afternoon, and weak November sunlight waned against the window overlooking the sloped front boughs of the oak tree dominating it wavered in the chilly breeze, and shafts of amber rays filtered through the final dead leaves clinging stubbornly to the branches. He gazed out into the day, his eyes going to the roof of the house across the street. Beyond that was open sky, and beyond even that was Lemy, his only son. A source of endless aggravation since he was a child, Lemy was, Lincoln sometimes thought, more trouble than he was worth.

Make no mistake about it, he loved his son, but he didn't like him, the same way he didn't like Leia but loved her regardless. They were a lot alike, those two; they both never met a bad choice they didn't like. If they came to a fork in the road, one route leading to bad and the other to worse, they would both gleefully skip down the latter, holding hands and singing like elves in a Disney movie. Then there was Loan; she took so goddamn many pills for her problems she practically bled Xanax. She was stable now - she worked a job and even dated - but all it would take was a stiff gust of wind, and down she'd go like a house of cards. It happened before, and it would happen again.

All of his children faced their own set of challenges, but all of them, even Leia, managed to pull through...except for Lemy. From the time he was twelve, he was a thorn in Lincoln's side; drinking, smoking, staying out late, running wild with his hoodlum friends and terrorizing Royal Woods. By the time he was sixteen, he had a rap sheet thicker than a telephone book, and when he was seventeen he spent six months in juvenile hall for stealing a golf cart with his friends and using it to play midnight bumper cars on Main Street with a second stolen golf cart. Lincoln and his friends got up to things when they were that age, but that was ridiculous.

Lemy's problem was respect: He didn't have any. He thought the world owed him something and didn't believe he had to work or take responsibility for his actions. I'm a victim, dude, he could hear him saying, and his grip on the arms tightened.

If Lemy was a victim of anything, it was himself.

And, in Lincoln's more charitable moments, not being disciplined well enough. Lincoln worked three jobs during Lemy's childhood and just didn't have the time to do it. Luna, on the other hand, stayed home all day long, and the most she ever did was yell and send him to his room. That's now how you deal with a delinquent...not that she cared. She'd rather drink and write music that no one bought or cared about. She was lazy, shiftless, selfish, and dulled her broken dreams with chemicals both legal and otherwise.

She and Lemy were just alike.

The only difference was: He was genuinely happy the day Luna left. With Lemy, he felt a vague and muted sense of head shaking loss, the kind you might feel when watching a very close but very, very stubborn friend making a terrible mistake.

No, there was another difference. Luna leaving made no impact whatsoever on his family, but Lemy leaving did...in a good way. He was always stealing from people, slipping twenties out of Leia's purse and filching things from the attic to pawn. Lincoln wasn't sure, but he thought he pawned Pop-Pop's war medals - how goddamn low can you get?

Then there were his friends; he brought them over at all hours of the day and night, and all of them were just as bad as he was. They'd go into Lemy's room, turn up the music, and do drugs. The next day, if you made the mistake of walking in, you'd better be wearing shoes because you were guaranteed to step on at least one needle. Lincoln didn't want that crap around his family, and because it stuck to Lemy like flies to shit, him leaving was the only solution.

Lemy was his son, however, and Lincoln was prepared to put up with a lot from him. The last straw was the meth lab. He walked into the garage to get something, and there it was, two facing tables crammed with crap lifted from Lisa's lab - beakers bubbling, rocks cooking, meth...being made, he didn't fucking know, he saw it and flipped, reaming Lemy and his slut meth head girlfriend (Sandy? Sondra) new assholes before throwing them out.

It was like a tooth being pulled under anesthetic: Mildly uncomfortable but ultimately necessary. Lemy stayed in Royal Woods for a few years afterwards, sleeping on couches and in cheap motel rooms; Lincoln didn't allow him at the house. If he was honest with himself: He hated looking at his son, because he saw so much potential in him...and with every breath that boy took, he steadily pissed it away. He was smart in many ways - deep, philosophical, good with his hands - but smart doesn't mean a thing if you drown it in booze and hard drugs.

Presently, Lincoln sighed and looked away from the window. His mood was darkening, as it always did when he thought too much about Lemy; he needed something to get his mind off it. He glanced around the room, his eyes darting from the framed portraits on the walls to the over crammed bookshelves. When he was a child, this was his mother's office, now, forty odd years later, it was his study - there was no stone fireplace, but there were busts and rotting hardback tomes, many of which he hadn't read. He always liked the idea of having a study like a Victorian gentleman, a place to sit in an armchair, wear a smoking jacket, sip brandy, and forget life's little worries for a while. This half-hearted modern derivative was as close as he would ever get, though, a fact he came to terms with years ago.

Getting up with a weary sigh, he went to one of the shelves and scanned the spines of a hundred works, none of which arrested his attention. Finally settling for The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, he returned to the armchair and sat, one leg crossing over the other. He reached out, took his reading glasses from the desk, and slipped them on. He was only fifty-one, but some days he could swear he was much older: His eyesight was failing, he couldn't sleep most nights, and his back was always so damn sore.

He opened the cover and read the title page, already decided that he wouldn't actually finish the book - he bought it at a yard sale ten years ago because he remembered it from history class. Published in 1906, it dealt with an immigrant working in a meat packing plant. Sinclair's focus was on the hardships of the protagonist, but the rest of the country was appalled by its well-researched descriptions of the meat packing industry, leading directly to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Sinclair wrote: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Lincoln considered it a classic, but as Mark Twain once said: A classic is a book everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read.

That brought a sardonic smile to his face. Twain, known for Tom Sawyer, was a humorist, and a damn good one for the late 19th century. Lincoln had never read any of his longer works, though.

He flipped to the first page and began to read:

It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon Marija's broad shoulders—it was her task to see that all things went in due form…

For some reason he imagined Marija (how does one even pronounce that name, anyway?) as Lemy, and instantly she went from a hardworking woman to a lazy bum who shot up and blasted rock music to cover the sound of his own life crashing down around him. It was his task to see that all things went in due form, and he fucked it up so badly the whole world stopped for just a tick as if in sad acknowledgement of a failure so catastrophic.

And what failure was that?

God only knew; Lemy had a never ending supply of them up his sleeve.

...and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself.

Lincoln's mind wandered; he didn't even fully understand what the last sentence was even trying to say. Maybe people would read classics more often if they weren't so bland and confusing.

He snapped the book closed, tossed it onto the desk, and removed his reading glasses, which he sat atop the text. He got up and went into the living room; Lucy sat on the couch in front of CNN; hooligans in mask ran wild through the streets of Seattle and clashed with police in riot gear over the G8 Summit or some damn thing. They did this every year, and every year Lincoln hated the lawless little brats even more. If Lemy was politically minded, he'd be there in a heartbeat, failing on live TV and bringing shame to the family.

Ignoring the screen, he went into the kitchen, where Lori stood at the stove, stirring dinner with a wooden spoon. Smelled like beef soup; perfect for a cold, blustery day such as this. Lori looked over her shoulder then away, her pearl earrings swinging back and forth against the aged-leather like skin of her neck. She was fifty-seven this past September, and looked it every bit: Her hair, once like summer wheat, was pale and graying, and deep lines puckered the corners of her mouth and eyes. Faint affection stirred in his chest like the last embers of a dying fire, and he went to her, one hand fluttering to her hip. She leaned slightly into him and stirred the pot with nary a word.

Fifty-one isn't very old by modern standards, but it was old enough for one to be confident and assured, and for one to no longer delude themselves. Of all his sister-wives, Lori was his favorite, and always had been. She was firm and centered, a practical, no-nonsense, and disciplined woman with a clear understanding of the way things were and the way things ought to be. "That smells good," he commented.

"Beef stew," she said. She spoke few words any more, and when she did, her sisters and the kids listened.

"It's a good day for it," Lincoln said. He gave her hip an affectionate squeeze, then went to the refrigerator. "Loan's coming, isn't she?" He opened the door and took out a bottle of Beck's. He sat it on the counter, grabbed a bottle opener, and popped the top.

Lori tapped the spoon against the side of the pot. "She said she was."

"Let's see if she keeps her word." he grumbled and took a drink. Loan was always making plans and then cancelling them under the pretense of having something else to do. In actuality, she retreated into her apartment and hid from the world like an anxious mess, too overwhelmed to function like a normal human being.

Setting the spoon aside, Lori nodded. "We'll see. She should be here shortly."

And see they did.

Loan did not come to dinner.


	2. One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

It was fifteen after six when Lemy stepped off the number 12 at the Lark and Armory stop, his jacket damp and his socks squelching inside his sodden boots. Like everyday, the bus was overcrowded and standing room only, so he rode all twenty-five blocks with his nose nestled in some fat woman's armpit and gripping the same metal handhold as three other people. He fucking hated public transport, but he didn't have the money for a car, so it was either that or walk.

Bending against the driving rain, people rushing around him on either side and holding briefcases and newspapers over their heads, Lemy hurried down Armory, passing a haji mart and a group of homeless people sitting around the stoop. One tried to get his attention with a soft, pleading "Excuse me, sir," that turned into a hateful, "Fuck you," when Lemy ignored him. He hated coming this way because every time he did, bums mobbed him. You got a cigarette? Can I get a dollar? What'cha got in the bag? Anything to eat? Oh, paper towels? Can I have them? When he first moved to the city, he felt bad for them and kept spare pocket change aside, but after a couple months, he was done; like any newbie city dweller, they broke him in and made him hard. If you can give him a dollar you can give me one too, one once said to him, his voice rising and falling in indignation. Excuse me, asshole?

It was even worse at night - because in addition to the bums, the pushers, pimps, and prostitutes came out. In this part of town, you could have anything you wanted: Crack, meth, weed, pussy, dick, you name it. Someone even once tried to sell him three packs of Sargento cheese from a plastic bag.

Lemy grew up in a boring small town where the hottest thing going was an arcade filled with thirty year old game cabinets; he used to idolize places like this. Everything was right there, something was always happening, and best of all, you couldn't help finding a good time if you just looked hard enough.

Now?

He fucking hated the city and everyone in it.

Past Lynch Street, the buildings flanking the cracked sidewalk turned residential, tall, ancient brownstones with wide stoops and foreboding facades. He turned right onto James, passed a vacant, weed-choked lot, a tumbledown Sunoco with a weathered plywood board in place of the front window, and arrived at his building, a wide brick three story box with black window panes up and down the front. WRFK 106.7 read the sign out front. When he picked chicks up at the bar, he told them he worked at a radio station. It wasn't a lie...but it wasn't true either, hahahaha.

He went to go in through the front door, but it wouldn't budge.

Shit.

Locked.

He pressed his face to the glass, and someone shoved it open from the inside, knocking him back, tears springing to his eyes when the pane slammed his nose.

There was only one person in the world rude enough to do that.

And there she was, filling the frame, a short, fat black woman in black pants and a white button up uniform shirt, a bronze, Cracker-Jack badge pinned to her left breast.

Elsie.

She arched her brow and pursed her lips, her brown eyes burning with mega-bitch intensity. Lemy steeled himself for what was about to come.

"You late," she said.

He mustered as much patience as he could and nodded. "I know, I'm sorry, I missed the bus."

Elsie looked him up and down as though he were a particularly disgusting bug. 5'8? I didn't know they stacked shit that high. "You always missin' that bus. You don't know what time it come?"

"My clock is slow."

"Fix it."

Lemy started to argue, but she had him there. He kept meaning to, but then he'd get drunk or stoned and forget.

Elsie hummed. "Umhm. I already called Sean."

Aw, fuck, really? So he was a little late, did she really have to go fucking complain to his boss? "You was supposed to be here an hour ago, and I got things to do, you holdin' me up and I'm gettin' real sick of it." She moved aside so he could enter, and he brushed past, his stomach in knots. Sean was going to be pissed; Lemy would probably get a call later. What's goin' on down there? Elise, Elsie is what's going on down here. The bitch won't cut me any slack.

The lobby was cast in shadows, a desk to his right and a waiting area to his left, potted plants, chairs, and end tables stacked with old magazines. One time, for a laugh, he slipped a Hustler in between a People and a Seventeen. He checked on it every night for a month before it finally disappeared. Hahaha.

A long hall ran the length of the building, office doors opening on either side. As he went down it, he could feel Elsie's eyes steady on his back like the laser sights of a rifle. If she could shoot him with just a look, he would have died five times over by now.

Another hall met the first in a T-shaped junction. He went left, pulled out his keys, and unlocked a door marked JANITOR. Inside was a tiny room with cracked concrete floors, block walls, and a mop sink to one side. He pulled out his janitor cart, slipped out of his jacket, and tossed it aside. He grabbed the mop bucket from the front of the cart, took it over to the sink, and filled it up. He picked up a bottle of cleaning chemicals from the floor, but it was empty. Damn, that's right, he'd been meaning to text Sean a supply list. He was low on small trash bags, large trash bags, paper towels, toilet paper, metal polish, and...everything, really.

He should text him now.

Ehhh...nah, he'd do it later. Right now he just wanted to get started - he had another building two blocks over, and if he hurried, he could just make the last bus back to West.

Guess the floor's getting mopped with just water.

Again.

Wow, he needed a drink. His mouth was already dry and his throat tacky. Did he have enough money to get a bottle on his way to the other building? He didn't think so. He'd check in a minute, though.

Making sure he had everything he needed, he pushed the cart back to the lobby, stabbed the up button flanking the elevator, and waited as the car came down from the third floor. Elsie sat behind the desk talking into her phone...loudly...abrasively...like she did everything.

When the doors slid open, he wheeled the cart in and jabbed the 3 button.

The WRFK building was a cakewalk - the studios on the third floor only needed trash removal, a quick vacuum in the common area, and a mop. He wasn't allowed into the production booth or the actual studio itself because ugh expensive equipment, ugh, the dumb cleaner might fuck it up or steal it, so he was usually done up here in twenty minutes tops.

He left the cart in the lobby and went to another closet, this one unlocked. Inside was his vacuum, a blue backpack model with black straps and a black accordian hose attached to a metal wand. He grabbed it, dragged it out (it was full...he should empty it...eh, that takes time and he didn't have time if he wanted to make that bus), then went back to the cart and realized he forgot small trash bags. Fuck. That meant running back downstairs and grabbing some.

Not wanting to wait for the elevator, he went down the stair well, came out in the lobby, and hurried to the closet; Elsie rolled her eyes and shook her head. Fuck you, bitch.

Back on the third floor, he snatched a microfiber cloth from the cart and went into the women's room.

Man, he needed a drink.

Inside, he threw the cloth into one of the sinks, wetted it, then wiped down the sink top, pausing long enough to splash water on the mirror and to run a paper towel over it. He gave the toilets a cursory wipe, emptied the bags in the little sanitary disposal boxes (you're supposed to throw them out when there's something in there, but he never did...too much work), then returned them.

Done, we went over to the men's room, the tip of his tongue swiping across his bottom lip.

When he was finished in there, he tossed the wet cloth onto his shoulder and did his rounds, changing the trash in four offices and the kitchenette at the end of the hall. He never vacuumed in here because it was too far away from an outlet and it was never all that messy. Instead, he got down on his hands and knees and picked up the biggest crumbs he could find, leaving the rest. Someone spilled coffee on the floor; it was dried now, like old blood. He wiped it with his cloth, then hit the counters and sink.

Next, he shrugged into the vacuum, plugged in the tangled, knotted cord (if Sean saw how bad it was he'd freak), and quickly vacuumed, neglecting to hit the corners or along the baseboard. He'd do that another day when he had time.

The day hell froze over.

He snorted.

Lastly, he mopped, flinging the sopping mop head across the floor in a zigzag pattern that left wide patches dry. He put the mop in the bucket, pushed the cart back into the elevator, then tossed the vacuum in.

Any detail work?

He did a quick walkthrough: Cobwebs danced in corners and thick layers of dust coated computers, shelves, phones, keyboards, and the edges of the floor.

Nope. All good here.

The second floor was a little harder and required more time: It was one massive room dominated by a sea of cubicles and lined with offices. Lemy had been working this building for a year and knew where to vacuum and where not to: Cubicles, to him, were synonymous with boring monotony, so it really wasn't a surprise that the same people made the same messes every single day. Of all fifty-eight cubicles, he only had to vacuum twenty - just like yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

At the end of one of the rows, he rolled his eyes. The lady who sat here was named Stephanie. He knew because there was a certificate with her name tacked above the computer. He imagined her as hot, since he'd never seen her, but she was such a fucking slob. Her trash can was literally two inches from her chair and half the shit she threw away missed and wound up on the floor.

In the kitchen, he mopped and paused at the counter to snake a doughnut from a box, which he quickly ate. One good thing about this job, free food. He typically stuck to snacks like this, but a couple times, when he was drunk, he raided the fridge and ate someone's lunch. Sean asked him about it once. They're sayin' they got food goin' missin'. You doin' that?

No, not me. I'm rail thin, man, I don't eat.

Second floor done, he moved to the first, his absolute favorite - like she did every night, Elsie followed him around, pointing out every little flaw she could find. "What that over there?" she asked and pointed.

"Loose carpet thread," Lemy said tightly. She knew damn well what it was; she asked about it each night.

"You gon' cut it?"

"I dont have a knife," he said.

In the lobby, she nodded to the fern sitting in front of the window. "That plant over there got dust on it."

Lemy bit his lip against a comment about her old, fat pussy having dust on it, and dusted the damn plant. It was full dark night and he was getting antsy - if he didn't hurry, he'd miss the bus, and he really didn't feel like walking twenty-five blocks home through the ghetto. He couldn't half ass the first floor, though; Elsie wouldn't let him.

When he was finally done twenty minutes later, he shoved all his shit into the closet, not bothering to empty the brown, scummy water from the mop bucket, ran the vacuum upstairs, then hurried into the damp night. "Don't be late tomorrow," Elsie called after him.

"I won't," he said, even though he figured he probably would be.

His second building, 16 Park Street, was bigger, six floors and home to suites occupied by lawyers, the state mental health association, a telemarketing call center, officers for Planned Parenthood, and a bunch of others. He didn't clean all of them, just most.

Luckily, the people in this building were a little cleaner than the ones at the radio station; he blasted through the first three floors in an hour, and was on number 3 emptying a trash can in yet another field of cubicles when the suite door opened. Lemy looked up, and his heart skipped a beat.

Sean.

His boss.

A short, stocky man with close-cropped salt and pepper hair, faded blue eyes, and the beginnings of a beard, Sean wore a green shirt with CITIJAN over the left breast in gold, shorts, and black tennis shoes. Lemy knew in an instant that there was a problem, since Sean was like Al Sharpton: The only time you ever saw him was when something bad happened.

Nodding curtly, Sean greeted him with a mumbled, "Hey, Lemy."

Stupid Elsie, Lemy thought. "Hey, how's it going?" he asked.

"Alright," Sean said and looked around. "We got some complaints."

Lemy did his best not to sigh. "Where?" he asked.

"Everywhere," Sean said, accusation creeping into his voice. "The sixth floor women's room is out of toilet paper, I just checked, and three stalls are low. The PP office says you haven't vacuumed in a week -"

"It didn't need it."

Sean blinked. "Oh, yeah? I walked across their kitchen floor just now and stuff was crunching under my feet. Didja dust?"

Things were looking bad. Better lie. "Yeah. I dust every night."

Sean swiped one finger across the top of a cubical wall and held it up; coated in dust. "Really?" he pressed.

"I dusted in here last Thursday," Lemy said; when Sean trained him in this building, he told him to dust once a week, and that's what Lemy did. Well, at this point it was more like once a month, but potayto potahto.

"No, you didn't," Sean said flatly. Lemy started to reply, but the older man cut him off. "You don't dust here, you don't dust at 450 James, you barely vacuum, your supply closet's running dry -"

"I meant to text you a list."

"Yeah, well, you didn't. You always wait 'til the last minute. You didn't empty the mop bucket, you missed a bunch of stuff on the third floor, you missed trash -"

Okay, that was bullshit, there was no way he could have missed a trash can. "Where?" he asked challengingly.

"The office with the mini fridge."

Lemy binked. "No one's been in that office in six months."

"Yeah, well, someone's in it now."

Damn it. He should have checked. He did periodically, but of course someone would move in on a day he didn't. See what he meant about the universe constantly fucking him over?

"I got Connley on my ass here, I got Wilson on my ass at James, you're not doing what you're supposed to and if it keeps up, we're gonna lose these accounts, and you're gonna lose your job." The timbre of Sean's voice rose as his irritation grew, a self-feeding fire getting higher and brighter. All Lemy could do was hang his head and take it like a bitch. God, he needed a drink. "I want this whole building dusted tonight, and I want those bathrooms to sparkle."

"Alright," Lemy said.

"I dropped off some supplies at James and I put some in your closet here. You need to keep up on what you have and tell me what you need. You also need to organize that closet, it's a mess in there."

Lemy nodded - he was going to miss the bus for sure. Goddamn it. "Alright."

"Good. You gotta shape up. Your buildings have the most complaints of any, and Connley says he's already looking at other cleaning companies. The only reason he hasn't tossed us out on our ass is because we've been doing this place for twenty years. He's patient, but not that patient."

Yeah. Okay.

After Sean left, Lemy flashed in anger and threw the trash can across the room. Fuck this job. He hated these buildings - the ones he used to do didn't piss and moan the way these did. It was always fucking something.

Sighing, he went about the rest of his night, a seething mass of rage stalking through the halls and dusting, wiping, vacuuming as though his life depended on it. Every time he caught sight of a clock, he checked the time and got steadily angier as he saw his chances of catching the bus fade. Every night he was up against the clock in a frantic race to the finish, and tonight he was going to lose all because of Connley and Wilson. Fuck those assholes. These buildings wouldn't be so bad if their tenants weren't fucking pigs.

It was after one when he finally finished and walked home through the hookers, druggies, and hobos up and down Central. The night was cold and damp, and by the time he reached his building, his teeth chattered and his feet ached. A bunch of junk sat on the curb, which meant someone got kicked out. Lol. Happened all the time; they'd come home to their door locked and all their worldly possession soaked in the rain. Poor bastards.

Inside, he went up the stairs, thinking of the beer in the fridge and the Hungry Man in the freezer. As he approached his door, he whipped out his keys, then stopped and frowned when he spotted a note taped over the eyehole.

He read it, and his heart sank.

EVICTED.

Oh no.

Suddenly flushed and starting to tremble, he tried his key in the lock, but it wouldn't fit.

That's when it hit him.

That jumbled pile of shit...wet and dirty with rainwater...was everything he owned.

Fury burst in his chest like a bomb, and he threw a reflexive punch at the door, denting it. He can't fucking do this, it's illegal!

He snatched his phone out just as it rang. That was probably him, Abdul the slumlord terrorist Arab fuck who thought he could just throw someone on the street without a thirty day notice. Lemy stabbed the TALK button and held the phone to his ear. "Yeah?" he asked tightly.

"Lemy," a firm, non Muslim voice said, "it's Sean."

Goddamn it, what did this asshole want? "Hey," Lemy said, trying but failing to soften his tone. "What's up?"

"We have a big problem at 16 Park."

Lemy's heart sank. What was it this time? What could it be? He did everything! And he did it right!

"You left the lobby door unlocked," Sean said, his voice dripping with content, "and all the lobby lights on."

Fuck. Did he? He tried to remember leaving Park Street, but couldn't; he was flustered, in a rush, and just wanted his goddamn drink...which, by the way, Abdul probably stole.

"You're lucky I found it and not Connley. We'd be out so fast our heads would spin."

Lemy sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, I just got home and -"

"Don't bother showing up tomorrow. You're fired."

Lemy froze. Fired? "Dude, wait, no, I'm sorry, I -"

"You can pick up your last check tomorrow. You're gone. Goodbye."

The line went dead, and Lemy was alone in a dim, dirty hallway, his life in shambles around him: No job, no place to live, and twenty bucks in his pocket.

He wasn't an overly emotional person, at all, but tears welled in his eyes as he dragged himself to the stairwell and sat heavily on the top step. What was he going to do? It was cold, he had nowhere to go, no money, nothing.

Inexplicably, he flashed back to the phone call that afternoon from his father. He called him a loser, didn't he? If so, he was right, he was a fucking loser. And a drunk too. The only thing he had going for him was that he wasn't addicted to anything and he wasn't a pedo.

He should sign that paperwork.

That thought struck him like a shot in the dark.

He didn't want to.

Even now, years later, he wanted things to be okay, to be normal, but they never would be.

And it was all his fault.

Going out there...at least he'd have a place to stay for a day. And maybe...maybe he could move back and be close to everyone. He'd have to keep his distance to spare everyone his fucked up curse, but he could see them at least, and be there for things.

He sighed.

Shortly after two, he got up and aimlessly walked the slick, empty streets, meeting only the occasional junkie or hooker; at one corner, an old woman stood beside a shopping cart piled with aluminum cans and rummaged through a pile of garbage.

At first, Lemy didn't know where he was going, but soon realized he was heading toward Regina, the check cashing place on Central. There was a Western Union there.

At 6am, as the first faint light of day crept across the rooftops, Lemy took out his phone and made a call.

Dad answered on the third ring. "Lemy," he said sourly.

In his state, hearing disgust in his own father's voice - disgust directed firmly at him - made him want to cry. Life doesn't have a reset button, but in that moment, Lemy sorely wished that it did, that he could go back to the beginning and try again. "Hey," he said, "I, uh, I thought about it and...I'm gonna come out and sign those papers." Those words tasted foul in his mouth, and he wanted to cry even more.

Dad let out a relieved breath. At least someone was happy about this. "Good. How are you getting here?"

"Greyhound," Lemy said, "I just...I need some money."

***

Lincoln Loud hit the red END button and laid the cordless phone on the nightstand; the lamp cast the bed in warm, amber light and held shadows at bay like a lantern in the dark. He laid back down and laced his hands over his chest. Next to him, Lori's eyes were opened to tired slits, the ilummmination sparkling in them and reminding him of muky tide pools. "Lemy?" she asked.

"Yeah," Lincoln said and stared up at the ceiling. "He's coming out."

Her lips twitched into a ghostly smile. "Good. We can finally get this behind us." She closed her lids, and within moments her breathing was even, rhythmic, asleep like a woman freed from a burdensome worry at last.

In a way, she was; for years this matter hung over them like a dark cloud. In his more introspective moments, Lincoln realized that perhaps he was making a bigger deal of it than he should, but he was old and set in his ways. He believed certain things and liked tasks done in a particular manner. We are all, every one of us, shaped by our own unique life experiences, thus no two people are quite the same. The bricklaying unionist's son was steeped in a different culture than the rich venture capitalist's daughter. Everything that happens to us, every fallback, every victory, every lesson is another ingredient in the stew of life, and once you reach a certain age, it all congeals to form your outlook and your beliefs. Lincoln grew up lower middle class in a bedroom community of Detroit; his parents were happily married and provided for their children; he finished high school and went to college even with so many children of his own to worry about; there were days he wanted to break down, crawl into a hole, and die, but he held on, because that's what a man does. No matter how bad things get at home, in war, or on the job, he hangs on and doesn't let go. If he does, it's because he's weak and not a man at all.

Unfortunately, Lemy was no man

He was an overgrown child. Were he a simpleton, Lincoln would accept it, but he wasn't - he was bright and always had been. He knew better than to do the things he did, but he did them anyway. That made him so much worse in Lincoln's eyes than others like him. That Sondra girl he was seeing, for instance. She was dumber than a box of rocks and you couldn't hold but the most superficial conversation with her. Lemy, on the other hand, was witty, engaging, and widely-knowledgeable. He wasn't particularly deep in any one subject beyond mechanics, but he could touch upon almost any topic in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. He had so much going for him, but he threw it all away.

Lincoln sighed, swung his legs out from under the covers, and sat up, his hand going to the back of his neck; stiff like every morning. He got up, snapped the light off, and went into the master bath, where he stripped out of his pajamas and got into the shower. As he bathed, he thought of Lemy. He'd have to tell the others he was coming, and someone would have to pick him up in Detroit. He wasn't going to do it, and he doubted Lori would either. Maybe Leni - even after Lemy chose his fate, Leni remained close with him. Leni was a very nurturing woman, but she'd always preferred boys over girls for some reason, and being the only male child, she was drawn instinctively to Lemy from the time he was a baby. Lincoln often wondered if she weren't grooming him for something in the future, but as far as he knew, her love for him was soft, warm, and familial, not fiery and perverted.

Yeah, he'd get her to do it.

Done, he got out, toweled off, and then went into the bedroom; feeble fingers of sunlight crept through the blinds like ivy, and Lori stirred under the blankets. It was 6:30, and he always left the house at seven no matter where he was going; Lori, like clockwork, was there in her robe to peck his cheek and see him off. Reliable, faithful. Like the revolutions of a celestial body, you could count on her.

And Lincoln had come to love her for that more even than her beauty or her well-hidden tender heart.

At the dresser, he selected a pair of black slacks and a pair of underwear, in which he dressed. He went to the closet, took out a plaid short sleeved button up, then put it on and tucked it into his pants. After putting his shoes and socks on, he left the room and went downstairs; the hall was still, dark, and silent at this hour. Not very many souls occupied 1216 Franklin Ave these days...far fewer than any time in the past forty years, come to think of it. Generations, like the seasons, come and go, but the house itself remained. Thanks in part to Lana and her love of home restoration - it took her over a decade of weekends and evenings, but she transformed it from ready-to-collapse to good-for-another-twenty years.

Speaking of Lana, he found her in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter and sipping coffee from a mug. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a bun and covered by a dark blue cap with ROYAL WOODS RAPTORS across the front in gold; despite the chill she must surely know the day would hold, she wore a pair of denim cutoffs that reached almost to her knees and a dark blue T-shirt with LOUD HOME IMPROVEMENT over the left breast.

Lana had always been one of the more industrial and entrepreneurial of his sisters - a trait she shared with Lola. The latter owned a beauty salon in town and the former started Loud Home Improvement when she was in her twenties, a one woman outfit specializing in roofs, siding, and seamless gutters. She brought Lincoln aborard as a partner fifteen years ago (at his insistence), and today they employed ten men and turned a respectable profit. Lincoln handled the business side of things - taxes, payroll, licensing, and advertising - while Lana worked on site.

Usually, Lincoln didn't go to jobs, but today he wanted to look into a few complaints from the customer, namely that one of their men was coming in late, leaving early, and walking around more than he actually worked.

His name was Chris and he was twenty-four. He reminded Lincoln a lot of Lemy, and for that reason, Lincoln had never liked him. He was a good worker, but he was lazy and got burned out fast. Two days running he and another boy were the only ones on the ground, siding the west wall of a new house, and those days, being nominally in charge, Chris decided to call it a day at 2pm after starting at 10.

That was unacceptable. The house, high on a hill overlooking Route 10, was fairly large, two stories, but installing siding and gutters, which is what they were contracted to do, shouldn't take more than two weeks.

They'd been there three, and the siding wasn't even done.

Needless to say, Lincoln wasn't happy and neither was Lana.

"Hey, Linc," she said and took a sip of coffee.

"Morning," Lincoln said. He grabbed a mug from the cabinet over the sink and poured some in. He took a drink and sighed. "You almost ready?"

Lana nodded. "Yeah, just let me hit the bathroom."

While she went off to use the toilet, Lincoln sipped his coffee and thought of Lemy - apparently that's all that would be on his mind today. The bus ride from the city to Detroit would take a day, so this time tomorrow, maybe later, he'd be back after two years. Lincoln couldn't say he outright dreaded seeing his son again, but he was not particularly looking forward to it either. He did not want to set sight on the shattered and pitiful creature Lemy had become, and he also didn't want to do something stupid like inviting him back to the house; if he did that, things would surely go back to the way they were before...and that, like Chris shucking work, was unacceptable. He couldn't have Lemy's...trash...around his family.

He refused.

Even so, he already knew deep in his heart that he would sound him out...and offer him a chance if he promised to clean up his act. Yesterday, he told him they would talk about him moving back to Royal Woods but not into my house, but if Lemy got his shit together...Lincoln just might let him stay here. He was hard on his son, maybe even harsh, but at the end of the day, he still loved him, and love makes people do stupid things.

At the door, he pulled on his jacket and placed a chaste kiss on Lori's lips. "Have a good day," she said.

"You too."

Outside, the day was blustery and cold; Lana shivered as she crossed the front lawn to her silver Ford F-550 at the curb. She slipped in behind the wheel and Lincoln slid into the passenger side, pulling the door closed behind him and buckling his seatbelt across his lap. Razor knives, screwdrivers, ratchet straps, plastic containers of nails, tape measures, and other things crowded the dash. "I need to stop at Western Union on the way," he said.

"What for?" Lana asked nonchalantly and threw the truck into drive. They pulled away from the curb and fell in behind a minivan.

Lincoln took a deep breath. She was not going to be happy. "Lemy," he said, looking straight ahead. In his periphery, she whipped her head around and furrowed her brows. "He's coming out to sign that paperwork."

He glanced at her, and her disdain was tempered with something else.

Relief.

"Well, that's good," she said, her mouth puckering as though she'd just sucked a lemon; she was only forty-five, but already, deep frown lines radiated from her mouth like lightning, and that gesture served only to exaggerate them. "It's about time. He asked for money?"

Lincoln nodded. "For a bus ticket," he said.

Lana hummed. "Watch him put it up his nose."

That was one of Lincoln's concerns when Lemy mentioned needing the money for a ticket - it wouldn't be the first time he lied to get money. He was just going to have to trust him, though, which was no easy feat. If it the matter to which this pertained wasn't so important, Lincoln would have told him to either hitchhike or piss off, but it was; he just wanted this over.

Lana turned onto Main Street. The Western Union office was ahead, wedged between a corner convenience store and a barber shop. "Is he staying at the house?" she asked as she navigated the truck to the curb.

"I imagine for at least one night," Lincoln said, "you might not like him but he's still -"

"I know," Lana said sharply and lifted a forestalling hand, "I just don't want anything to do with him while he's here, and I want him gone as soon as possible."

Lana was one of the few people in the family who had an honest excuse to dislike Lemy, Lincoln understood that and could even respect it, but when she talked like that, he couldn't help feeling hurt and insulted.

Flushing, he threw the door open, jumped out, and went inside; there was a line at the counter, and he crossed his arms, trying to ignore all the blacks and Puerto Ricans ahead of him. As he waited, he called Lemy. "I'm here now."

"Alright, I'll be at mine in a few minutes, I had to walk away because they said I was loitering."

When his turn at the window finally came, a fat Mexican woman with curly pink hair and a lip ring took down his information and the information Lemy recited into the phone. It took a few tries to go through for some reason, but finally it did. "Do you have it in your hand?" Lincoln asked before leaving the counter.

"Yeah," Lemy said, "they're giving it to me right now."

"Good," Lincoln said. He hesitated, then: "Don't drink it up, please."

"I won't," Lemy said, and the low, shameful quality of his voice made Lincoln inwardly flinch. Everything wrong with Lemy, he brought on himself, but if a man can hear pain in his son's voice and not feel something, he's bigger than Lincoln Loud.

He started to say something, anything, to soften to blow, but stopped himself. Tough love is best love, and tough is exactly what Lemy needed. In fact, if he had a little more toughness growing up, he might have straightened out. Lincoln considered sending him off to military school at one point, but Luna fought him tooth and nail. You're not sending my son to that fucking place, she spat. You go to military school. Sigh. That was Luna for you. Lemy was her baby boy and he never did wrong in her eyes; it was always someone else's fault.

That's where he got it, his mother. Best thing Luna could have done for him was fuck off years before she actually did; without her he might have stood a fighting chance.

As it happened, he didn't; she coddled him and now he was what he was.

"Alright," Lincoln said gruffly as he walked out the door and into an icy blast of wind. The words I love you welled in his throat, and he swallowed them. "Keep me updated."

Lana knelt by the passenger tire picking rocks out of the treads and Lincoln rolled his eyes. Lana was the type of woman who couldn't sit still; she had to be doing something at all times. She wouldn't even relax on the couch and watch a movie or a TV show - within minutes she'd be up and making busy work for herself. Lincoln thought she had ADHD; maybe she did, maybe she didn't, no one knew because in addition to her perpetual restlessness, she also nursed a pathological aversion to going to the doctor's.

She looked over her shoulder when he walked up, her eyes squinting against the glare of the morning sun.

"Okay, I will," Lemy said, then hung up.

And that was that. In a day, maybe a day and a half, Lemy would be here and...and he didn't know, he just didn't. When he was a very young man, Lincoln ordered his life to the minutest detail. Everything had a place, everything was in its place, and his routine rarely changed. He liked knowing what the day held and was not fond of surprises. At all.

Lemy, however, was a wild card, and had been nothing but a surprise. In a way...and this shamed Lincoln...he hoped Lemy came out, signed the paperwork, then left so that everyone could move on with their lives.

His stomach rumbled with indigestion. He snapped the phone closed and slipped it into his jacket pocket while Lana got to her feet and slapped dust from her knees. "You do it?" she asked.

"No," Lincoln said sourly, "I sent it to Santa Claus instead." He didn't want to hear Lana's shit no matter how justified it may be, and he didn't even want to think about this anymore. He brushed rudely past her, opened the door, and climbed into the truck. Lana sneered at him, then drew a deep, angry breath and went around the front end, getting in behind the wheel and slamming the door behind her.

She didn't speak the rest of the way to the job, the atmosphere between the dark and heavy with tension. Lincoln ignored her sidelong glances and stared absently out the window. The nauseousness in his stomach increased until he reached into the glovebox, grabbed a bottle of Tums, and tossed a handful into his mouth, chewing them and grimacing at the dry, chalky flavor.

Outside of town, Main Street turned into Route 29 and wound through hilly woodland for several miles before the trees dropped away from the sides of the highway; Lincoln turned and spotted the house high on its hill, the facade covered in Tyvek paper fluttering in the breeze. The yard was dirt, and clouds kicked up as a white utility truck appeared from around back and started down the driveway. That was the electrician; Lincoln could have sworn he was supposed to come tomorrow.

Lana slowed and turned into the driveway, passing the electrician on the way up; the road was rutted and narrow, the terrain sloping down on the right hand side. At the top, she pulled around the side. Chris sat on a cooler smoking a cigarette; a tall, lanky kid with black hair and a goatee, he reminded Lincoln of a goat for some reason, even though he didn't particularly look like one. The metal brake and the saw table were set up behind him, and scrap panels of siding, nails, and pieces of white aluminum littered the soft dirt. Charlie, the foreman, stood on the scaffolding fifty feet up, cutting a notch a corner post with snips; he wore a florescent yellow LOUD HOME IMPROVEMENT shirt with the sleeves cut off, his fat rolls bulging against the fabric and spilling out in places. His hair was shaved close to his scalp and sunglasses covered his eyes.

The staging consisted of two tall metal poles affixed to the roof with a long metal platform between them. Lincoln had never been up on it and never would; he never admitted out loud, but heights bothered him.

Charlie glanced at them as they parked, and Chris took a drag of his smoke; he moved with the sedate leisure of a man who wasn't on the clock. Lincoln saw so much of Lemy in him it made him sick.

Lana killed the engine and they got out. "Hey, Lana," Charlie called from the staging.

Lana leaned her head back and shielded her eyes with her hand, looking like a little girl clumsily saluting a fallen hero. "Hey, Charlie. Gettin' 'er done?"

"We're gettin' there," he said noncommittally. Charlie had back problems and hadn't been on the job since a few days after they started. Lana called him in today because she needed someone who wouldn't knock off and go home after two hours of walking around looking stupid.

Lincoln glared at Chris; the boy took a drag and blew out a bluish haze that hung around his head like dragon's breath. Look at him, Lincoln thought, fucking bum, freeloader, sitting there like a sack of shit on my dime, eating my food, using my power, bringing his asshole friends into my house…

When he realized he was thinking about Lemy again, he took a deep breath, walked over, and stood next to Lana before he said or did something rash.

"...should have this wall done by…" Charlie ticked his head from side to side in thought, "probably noon, then we'll move the staging around front. I wanna get most of that done before we leave."

Lana nodded. "Alright, that sounds good. If we can get out of here by Thursday, I'll be a happy girl."

"We'll try our best," he said with practiced patience.

Lincoln glanced at Chris: The boy flung his cigarette to the ground, got to his feet, and stretched. Your best isn't good enough, he thought.

Putting her hands on her hips, Lana turned to the slacker and nodded for him to approach. "Come here."

Chris, in the middle of slipping his tool belt around his waist, froze for a second, then hurriedly strapped in on and came over, his head hanging contritely. He knew what was coming, and why. "What's with this coming in late and leaving early stuff?" she asked. "You left at two yesterday?"

Chris nodded. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I really needed to go, I had things to do."

Things to do, huh? Lincoln had heard that one a million times before; always an excuse, never owning up.

"What things?" Lana asked incredulously.

"I had to see my probation officer."

Lincoln rolled his eyes and shook his head; Chirs nervously darted his gaze to him then back to Lana.

"Yeah, well, if you gotta do something like that, you need to let me know in advance so I can do something else. Frank's pissed that we're taking so long and if he stops giving me work, I stop giving you work."

Chris nodded jerkily. "Okay. Sorry. I won't do it again."

That's another thing Lincoln had heard a million times before. Sorry, Dad, I promise I won't do it again. I'll change. Honest. Only he never did change; he got worse and worse until he was sitting drunk in his own piss with needles hanging out of his arms while…

Burning anger ignited in Lincoln's chest, and he closed that thought out. He never laid his hands on his son, but the day he found him like that, he almost strangled him. Not metaphorically...not I could have choked him, lol...he came close to literally wrapping his hands around his throat and squeezing.

Fucking scumbag.

He was getting carried away again, like he always did when he thought too much about Lemy. Shame spread across the back of his neck and he took deep, calming breath. Lemy wasn't a scumbag, he was just...he was mixed up and..and he wasn't innocent, but it wasn't all his fault either.

It was Luna's.

Lincoln's jaw set and his eyes narrowed. Sometimes he wished he beat her when he had the chance; drunk, scummy, cheating bitch.

"And when you're on one of my jobs, I expect you to work, not wander around like you're Moses," Lana was saying, "got it?"

Chris nodded. "Yes, ma'am." His voice was a low, chastised mumble.

With a glance up at Charlie, Lana turned and got into the truck; Lincoln followed, fighting the urge to reach out and grab Chris by his stupid face. Get it together while you can, dumbass. In his seat, his pulled his belt on as Lana threw it into reverse. "If he fucks up again, he's gone," she said irritably.

"Maybe that'll wake him up," Lincoln said.

"Doubt it."

Honestly, so did he: Lemy was fired from a dozen jobs over the years, including this one: He lasted three months before Lana went behind Lincoln's back and canned him. Lincoln wasn't happy about it, but he let it happen because Lemy deserved it - he kept showing up drunk and high, and the day Lana went off on him, he and another guy were carrying one of the staging poles when Lemy stumbled and sent the end crashing through a window. The day before that, he sided a whole wall crooked; they had to tear it down and start all over again.

From what he'd heard, he was no better now. He was working at a cleaning company and had been for a while, but it was only a matter of time until he got himself fired.

He wondered if Lana would let him come back to work...if he was committed to changing.

Probably not.


	3. Going Home

Lemy boarded the 10:15 to Detroit after loafing around the station for two long, mind-numbing hours. On his way over, he stopped at McDonald's and used some of the money Dad sent him to buy an Egg McMuffin and a coffee. Sitting in a booth along one of the windows, he stared out at the parking lot as he ate. A white paper bag spun and danced in the breeze, and Lemy absently watched it, his stomach turning sour; he was thinking about the future, and unlike the song, it wasn't bright at all - it was dark and bleak.

Dropping his unfinished sandwich onto the tray, he sat back and drew a deep breath. He made a lot of mistakes in his life, and right now it felt like he was being drawn into making another.

And not just any mistake, the absolute biggest of his entire life.

A black minivan coated with dust pulled into the parking lot and the bag disappeared under its tires. He turned to the empty playground behind him, dim and desolate now, but soon to be filled with happy, playing children and their loving parents.

Or maybe not going back and signing those papers was a mistake. He honestly didn't know anymore; every time he thought he was doing the right thing, it wound up being wrong. Nothing he ever did turned out right, and each time he dismissed something as being dumb, gay, retarded, or not a very good idea, he got egg on his face. He thought finishing high school was lame, now he had no diploma and no GED, so his career options were limited; he thought moving out to the city would help him get on his feet; he thought a lot of things.

Like that holding on was right.

Maybe he was selfish, but he didn't want to let go, he really didn't - call him what you want, but he wanted so fucking desperately for things to be okay and normal that it kept him awake at nights, eating at him like cancer.

They wouldn't be, though; they never had been and they never would be.

That thought depressed him, and the hankering for a drink hit him like a fist to the mouth. He swallowed thickly and swiped the back of his hand across his lips. There was a liquor store around the corner; he had enough to get a bottle or two.

He started to get up, but stopped when his father's words came back to him. Don't drink it up. What a fucking prick; like he was so irresponsible he'd spend the whole thing on booze. Dad thought so fucking little of him that it was enough to make him not even wanna go out there.

Whatever, screw him.

Lemy grabbed his coffee and went out the side door. He waited for a truck to pass before crossing the parking lot and turning left onto the sidewalk.

The bus station was downtown, and tall buildings stood against the gray morning sky on all sides. Crowds of pedestrians hurried to their daily destinations, many of them wearing suits or dresses and holding briefcases. Taxis, city cops, and bicycle couriers passed in the street, and at a corner, an Arab man in a white apron sold hot dogs from a cart. He tried to hawk one to Lemy, but Lemy just shook his head and kept going.

All through his childhood, Dad ignored him - every time Lemy tried to get him to play catch with him or to play a video game with him, he was too tired from work. After a while, he stopped trying. And you know what? It pissed him off; he got bitter, and even now, he could feel it roiling in his guts like acid. Dad acted like he didn't even exist sometimes, and everything he did meant nothing. In sixth grade, he won a class spelling bee, got a little certificate and everything. He was so proud of himself, and the first thing he wanted to do with it was show Dad. He got home and went up to his father's chair...just to get a wave of the hand. I'll look at it later, he said, like it was garbage.

Like Lemy was garbage.

The first time he got caught shoplifting at Flip's, Dad was right there to ream him out, though; he had time for that. The next time he got caught? He did it on purpose just because.

And maaaaaybe he kind of liked the attention.

Presently, he joined a crush of humanity waiting to cross the street and wound up standing next to a slim black woman in a power suit. Her firm ass drew his eyes, and he leaned back a little to get a better view. Of all the problems he'd ever had in his life, getting a woman wasn't one. He couldn't have any (he'd have to be rich and or famous for that), but he was smooth enough and charming when he wanted to be. Lately, he really didn't wanna be. He wanted…

Sigh.

He wanted something he couldn't have.

Because he was weak and given the first chance, he'd fuck it up, just like he fucked it up before.

The light changed, and the tide carried him across the lane. The liquor store was on a corner next to a pawn shop with bars on the windows and a sign on the door that said LOITERS WILL BE SHOT, SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN. Okay, then, remind me not to loiter.

Inside, the store was cramped and claustrophobic, shelves along the walls and two in the center of the floor. A bored looking Indian man leaned against the counter and watched Lemy with narrow-eyed suspicion. Lemy ignored him, went to a shelf flanking the back wall, and grabbed two bottles of Canadian Mist whiskey. Could he fit these in the pockets inside his jacket? He opened his coat and started to shove one in to see, and the Indian perked up. "No, no, no!" he cried in a thickly accented voice and waved his hand. "You no steal from me!"

Lemy froze. "Hey, no, I-I'm not stealing, I -"

"You go to jail you steal from me. I no play games with people who steal. People who steal bad."

"Dude, I swear, I wasn't -"

"Leave my liquor store!" He jabbed one finger at the door.

Lemy threw his head back. "Aw, man, come on, I swear, I'm gonna pay."

"You pay now!"

"Okay, okay, shit." Lemy went to the counter and sat the bottles down with matching clunks. The clerk snatched one and scanned it, then the other, his eyes never leaving Lemy and his lips in a sour sneer. If Lemy had any pride, he'd have smashed the bottles on the fucking floor and walked out, but he didn't, so he stood there with his head hung in shame.

"30.50," the clerk spat.

Lemy took a crumpled wad of bills from his pocket and laid two twenties on the countertop. The clerk took them, opened the register, and slipped them in, closing the door.

"Uh, my change."

"Trying to steal from me fee," the clerk grumbled. "You pay price."

Seriously? Lemy threw up one hand. "I wasn't stealing! Give me my change!"

The clerk's eyes flashed. "No," he snarled, then pointed at the door. "You leave."

For a minute Lemy simply stared at him, his brows angled down in an angry V and his teeth clenched. He could punch him in the face then run; he wasn't in top physical form, but he was fast and always had been - years of outrunning cops and security guards honed his speed to perfection. Just this once, though, he thought before he acted: He didn't wanna go to jail...he just wanted out of this miserable fucking city.

He grabbed the bottles and shoved one into each inside pocket of his coat, then went out the door, fighting and winning against the urge to slam it as hard as he could. He almost called a racist name of his shoulder, but the Inflammatory Speech Act of 2052 made that kind of shit illegal, so he just bit his tongue.

Everything that can go wrong will. Pfft. Fucking bullshit, fuck that guy, fuck this city, and fuck this state. He didn't know where he was ultimately going - maybe he'd swallow his pride and stay in Royal Woods, maybe not - but he was never coming back here. Too many goddamn bad memories: Poverty, homeless shelters, hunger, tainted smack that took him to the brink of death (three times), lost jobs, broken relationships, broken dreams.

It occurred to him that those kinds of memories haunted Royal Woods as well. He lived there for the first twenty five years of his life - it was so steeped in bad memories it practically bubbled.

Everywhere I go is a bad fucking memory, he thought bitterly as he started toward the bus station. The truth of that statement twisted in his stomach like a knife, and he swallowed thickly. Before coming here, he lived in a smaller city south, a storied hub of industry crowded with factories and steel mills. He liked its working class charm, the ancient brick buildings along the river, and the old houses, but by the time he left (three months after arriving), he hated its guts and never wanted to see it again. Before that was Detroit, which turned his stomach every time he thought about it. And finally, before that, Royal Woods. A great weight pressed down on his chest, and even though he was outside, claustrophobia gripped him. The buildings were too tall, too dense, getting closer, looming over him like leering child molesters ringing a lost little boy in a trailer park.

Suddenly, he didn't want to leave the city so badly.

And he did not want to go to Royal Woods.

At an intersection, he turned around and went back the way he came, his stomach rolling and threatening to spill from his mouth. There was a mission on Lawndale Ave - he got stay there for awhile, and maybe, maybe, he could beg Sean for his job back.

What would he tell Dad, though?

Eh, fuck Dad.

He was a block back, moving through an oncoming crowd like a salmon swimming upstream, when his father's voice filled his head. You're running away.

No, I'm not.

Yes you are. You always run from the messes you make instead of owning up to them.

Signing that paperwork is a mistake.

No it isn't. You signing it would be the best thing you could ever do for those -

Lemy balled his fists.

But you're being selfish. Like always. You're holding onto something you have no plans to actually ever use. You're a hoarder of the worst sort.

Fuck you.

You make vague platitudes, but you have no plans to ever be a -

Shut. Up.

You're not a man. A man would come take care of his problems. A man would do the right thing for his family.

Hot, stinging tears welled in Lemy's eyes, and he shuffled to a stop; people streamed around him on either side like a river parting at a jutting rock, their faces white masks of apathy, unfeeling, uncaring.

Dad was right. Going back and signing that paperwork...he didn't want to, but when you're a man, Dad said once, you sometimes have to do things you don't like.

He looked over his shoulder, seeing not a city street, but the future.

It would be best.

For everyone.

Slumping his shoulders in defeat, he turned and dragged himself the twenty blocks to the bus station, getting there just before 9:30. At the window, he bought a one way ticket to Detroit from a sleepy looking white woman with platinum blonde hair, then sat in a chair next to a Coke machine. The waiting room as nearly empty, the only other occupants being a man in a business suit and a teenage boy wearing a red and white letterman jacket. Lemy twisted the lid off one of the bottles and stole a surreptitious drink; the whiskey burned going down and detonated in his stomach like a bomb, its fortifying warmth spreading through his cold and tired body.

During the forty-five minute wait, his drinks went from little, hidden nips, to openly tipping the bottle back and guzzling, amber liquid sluicing down the corners of his mouth. The blonde behind the window looked at him and rolled her eyes, and the man in the business suit lifted his brows in what could only be snide condescendtion. Fuck them. He was getting the fuck up out of this city, and they could all go to hell.

When the bus finally arrived, he shoved the bottle, nearly empty now, into his pocket and climbed on, taking a window seat adjacent to the driver, a black man in sunglasses and a baseball cap with a sports team logo on it. He felt loose, light, and fuzzy, all of his problems a million miles away in either direction.

This...this was why he drank; when everything in the world was falling down around him, all he had to do was pay a little money, spin a cap, and BAM, happy. It didn't last forever, but when you can't stand to look at your own face in the mirror and lay awake at night in regret, even a few hours away is worth the price of admission.

He took the bottle out and opened it, then stiffened when the bus driver spoke. "Yo, yo, yo, you can't be drinkin' that on my bus."

Lemy looked up, and the driver stared at him with an admonishing expression, head down, brows lifted. Lemy started to tell him to fuck off, but thought better of it and put the bottle away. There were bathrooms on this thing - he'd go drink in one of those later.

The driver watched him warily for a moment, then turned in his seat and started the engine. Lemy gazed out the grimy window as the bus pulled away from the platform and turned onto Front Street, passing a rush of vacant, overgrown lots, boarded up houses, and abandoned warehouses. In the distance, a curved highway overpass leading to I-95 stood stark against the skyline, cars and trucks zipping along like toys on a track. The driver took the onramp and joined the flow of traffic, the road lifting high above the city; its narrow streets, decaying buildings, and trash strewn lots lay spread out before him like a dirty blanket, and he grimaced at it. I hope you burn, he thought as the road straightened and soared over Downtown, with hits fashionable shops, clean avenues, and well-manicured lawns - a diamond mired in shit, an oasis surrounded by dystopian wasteland crawling with Mad Maxian thugs. Bunch of rich assholes. Fuck them.

He turned away and stared at the back of the seat before him.

He never saw that city again.

***

Before going home for the day, Lincoln stopped by Beauty Queen's, Lola's salon - it occupied a small storefront in the Royal Pines strip mall on the edge of town, flanked by a Food-Lion on one side and a Chinese take-out joint called Wok and Roll on the other. He parked the truck in a slot facing the street and cut the engine, killing DNCE in the middle of Cake By The Ocean on 101.9, Solid Gold Oldies. He grabbed the keys, shoved them into his pocket, and got out, feeling like a small child - he hated using Lana's truck because it was so goddamn big. Why the cab needed to be fifty feet off the ground, he'd never know; when a man drives something like this, you say he's compensating for something (a small penis), but what about when a woman's behind the wheel?

That's she's a lesbian, which Lana may very well be; not only was she generally mannish, but she'd also had a couple very close female friends over the years. He didn't particularly care as long as she fulfilled her sisterly obligations - not that he called upon her very often.

Having so many wives, he'd come to desire something different from each. From Lori, he wanted stability and fidelity; from Leni, he wanted affection; from Lucy, intellectual stimulation; and from Lola, sex.

Waiting for a sedan to pass, Lincoln crossed the parking lot and made toward the front door; through the front windows, several women sat in chairs while hairdressers in a blue smocks worked on them from behind. Beauty Queen's employed seven people; five hairdressers and two receptionists. When Lola first opened it in 2048, nearly a decade ago, they had a staff of two dozen. During the Recession of 2051-4, they lost all but the remaining balance, and most of their business as well. Profits had been down for years, and if things kept going the way they were, they'd be in bankruptcy by 2060.

Lola was a stubborn woman, though, vain and prideful too - she absolutely refused to admit defeat and sell even though Andrew Goldblatt, their accountant, had been urging her to for eight months now. Things will pick up, she said and stuck her nose into the air, especially if we spend more on advertising. The last part came out dripping with accusation; they didn't have money for advertising, and the last time they did, the radio spots they bought drew exactly zero customers.

Inside, the smell of chemicals and hair products hung heavy in the sultry air, and Lincoln's nose crinkled; if he spent more than twenty minutes in here, his head started to ache.

Amanda, the receptionist, sat behind the front desk, a wide, calculated smile on her narrow face. A tall woman with curly carrot colored hair and too red lips, she reminded Lincoln of a giraffe...or maybe it was a hyena. He could never be certain. "Good afternoon, Mr. Loud," she said, her voice cloying and saccharine. Amanda was a friend of Lola's from beauty school and had been working here since the beginning. Lincoln never liked her. She was too fake. Lola, at least, was open with her disdain and haughtiness; Amanda hid hers behind a false front that, he suspected, was transparent on purpose...a way of adding to the insult.

Or maybe he was paranoid.

"Afternoon," he said and went up to the counter, his hands splaying on the edge. "Lola here?"

Amanda opened her mouth to reply, but Lola's singsong voice cut her off. "Right here, Lincy~"

He turned as she swept into the room from the back, a tall, thin woman with high cheekbones and blonde, elaborately coiffed hair piled atop her head, one long, curly strand hanging down the side of her arrogant face. Her green eyes, like those of a cat, were slightly narrowed, and the hem of her flowing pink dress rippled around her feet as she entered. Gold necklaces and diamond rings adorned her throat and fingers, and silver bracelets dangled from her slender wrists. Her pronounced fenminity had always attracted Lincoln, but it also repelled him too: She was the type of woman who refused to get her hands dirty, worried over broken nails, and demanded only the finest jewelry. She was high maintenance and thought far more highly of herself than she should, but her womanliness drove him wild when he let it.

"I'm here for the insurance paperwork," he said shortly when she came over.

"It's in the office," she replied with a flutter of the eyelids and gestured. It's simply beneath me. I can't be bothered to think of it.

Right now he wasn't in the mood for her high and mighty bullshit, and brushed rudely past her, making her stumble. "Come on. I need to talk to you."

Lola sighed. "About?"

"Just come on."

Rolling her eyes, she followed him through the shop and to the back office, a tiny space crammed with filing cabinets, a desk, an ancient desktop computer, and neat stacks of files, forms, and folders bulging with papers. The binder he needed sat next to the keyboard, clearly marked and ready to go. He picked it up and turned; Lola filled the doorway, her arms crossed and her brows lifted expectantly. "What do you need to talk to me about?" she asked snottily.

In the near forty years that they had been together, Lincoln had come to dislike Lola. He loved her as his sister and as the mother of his daughter Leia, but her personality was detestable at worst and irritating at best. They hadn't had a decent conversation since Donald Trump was president, and that, as far as he remembered, was the time they professed their feelings to each other, and in matters of taste, they were as dissimilar as winter and spring. She was, to put it mildly, shallow; you could delve into her personality and come back without even getting your hair wet.

Then there was the...Lemy situation. Like her twin, Lola had a reason to be angry at him, but unlike Lana, she was not the sort to hold her tongue. When Lemy still lived at home, she would constantly badger him and Leia both; God knows they deserved it, but she nitpicked every little thing to the point that he told her to shut the fuck up because he was sick of hearing it.

"Lemy," he said now, "he's coming out to sign that stuff."

Lola's hip cocked to one side and her tilted forward. "Oh, is he he now?" she asked sarcastically.

"Yes," Lincoln said, "he'll be here sometime tomorrow. Do not start anything. I don't feel like dealing with drama."

Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a dog-like sneer. "He's the one -"

Lincoln held up his hand. "I don't want to hear it,' he said sharply, "you know just as well as I do that this needs to happen, and I'd like it to be as painless as possible, please."

A humorless laugh burst from Lola's throat. "Painless? It's already been painful, Lincoln."

She wasn't wrong. "I don't want to add to it. If you can't keep your trap shut, stay away from him."

A dark shadow rippled across Lola's features, and her eyes glinted like the steely edge of a knife blade. "Fuck you, Lincoln Loud," she hissed through her teeth, "keep your son away from my daughter and from me too."

A fist of anger clutched Lincoln's heart, and his teeth bared. Lola had always tried to minimize his role in Leia's upbringing, and when she referred to her, it was always my daughter, and never our daughter. Hi, Lincy, guess what my daughter got on her math test today? A hundred! He didn't have time for discipling children, but he tried with Leia because Lola was like Luna only ten times worse, and every time he did, it lead to an argument. I will handle my daughter, go worry about your delinquent son. And how do you think Leia turned out? She was just like her mom, a stuck-up little bitch who thought her shit didn't stink. She was better now because life has a way of strangling you into humility sometimes, but when she was a teenager, she was a brat and Lincoln reached the point of disliking her as much as he disliked Lola.

"Just keep your shit to yourself," he said. "Now get out of my way."

In the truck, he slapped the folder onto the passenger seat and pulled the belt over his lap; the sky was soft with purple twilight, and the lamps up and down the street winked on one by one. He jammed the key into the ignition and turned; the engine roared to life, and the radio came on...the deejay was giving away tickets to see a nostalgia tour headlined by Ariana Grande. Lincoln threw the truck into reverse, backed up, and swung left, stopping at the exit and waiting for traffic to pass before turning right.

Fifteen minutes later, he parked at the curb in front of the house and got out; it was full night and the air was cold enough that his breath misted in front of him. Inside, the living room was warm and comfortably lit; Leni and Leia sat in front of the television, the former in a aquamarine sweater and the later in jeans and a pink halter top that tied in the front. Her long, layered blonde hair spilled over her shoulders like shimmering liquid gold, the ends curled slightly.

Neither acknowledged him as he passed behind the couch and went into the kitchen, not that he minded. He was tired, his back ached, and after the confrontation with Lola, his nerves were frayed.

Speaking of frayed nerves, Loan sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee raised to her lips; her hair was neatly combed and done up in a bun so tight it stretched her face back, lending her eyes the appearance of almonds. She wore a blue button-up blouse and a black skirt; her coat hung on the back of the chair. Lori stood at the stove flipping pork chops with a fork; the pan hissed and popped, and the smell of cooking meat found Lincoln's nose, making his stomach grumble. "...have to do sometimes," she was saying. She glanced at him when he entered, and his kissed her on the cheek.

"What's that?" he asked and looked to Loan.

Before she could speak, Lori said, "Her boss. He's giving her extra work but not extra pay."

Loan sat the mug down. "Yeah. It's really stressing me out. I have three reports to do by this Friday, and a spreadsheet, and a-a Powerpoint presentation tomorrow." She brought her thumb to her mouth and chewed the nail, her eyes going to the table. Lincoln watched her for a moment and tried to come up with something to say; he didn't know much about what being a paralegal entailed, but he imagined it did get stressful, especially for someone as miswired as Loan. As a teenager, she was diagnosed with virtually everything under the sun: OCD, anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar, borderline personality, intermittent explosive complex, and a thousand other things that Lincoln couldn't recall and didn't want to. She was always a nervous child, and tended to be withdrawn. Why, he couldn't say: Lori wasn't overly affectionate, but she showed Loan a reasonable amount of love and rarely ever pushed her too hard. Until her teens, that is, when she thought that her issues excused her from having to do well in school, help care for her younger siblings, and get a job. Her grades were never the best, but they began slipping during her freshman year, and that wasn't acceptable: One can't get into college on a shit GPA, and Lincoln intended for all of his children to go to college.

Of course things didn't go according to plan. With Loan they did, surprisingly, but not with everyone else.

"Sometimes you just have to suck it up," he said because he didn't know what else to say.

Loan nodded. "I know," she said, "I am, it just makes me…" she held her hands up and hooked her fingers like she was going to strangle someone.

"That's when you take deep breaths and remember that it's all worth it in the end," Lincoln said. He went to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of Beck's, and opened it. He took a deep drink and watched Lori. "It's almost ready," she said, "can you set the dining room table, Loan?"

"Yeah," Loan said and got up. Lincoln sat his beer on the counter, opened a cabinet, and grabbed a stack of plates without counting. He handed them to Loan, then gathered cups and silverware.

He followed behind Loan, laying a knife, fork, and glass at every spot she set. "How's Rich?" he asked to make conversation. Rich was Loan's current boyfriend and worked in the mailroom of her law firm.

"We broke up six months ago," she said flatly.

Oh.

Former boyfriend, then. Lincoln couldn't say he was upset; he didn't like Rich. He had a phoniness about him that reminded him of Lola. "Did something happen?" he asked as he sat the last fork down.

"Not really," she said in a tone that indicated she didn't want to talk about it.

Just as well, he figured. In the kitchen, he picked his beer up and took a drink. "How long?" he asked.

"I just need to finish the mashed potatoes," Lori said. "Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."

"Perfect."

He pushed away from the counter, went into the dining room, and then into the living room. He paused at the couch; Leia sat with her arms and legs crossed while Leni leaned forward to pick up a glass from the table. Lincoln took a deep breath and let it out slowly; his original plan was to make an announcement during dinner so that everyone present could find out together (Lucy would have to call Lupa since she couldn't make it), but he decided against it. "Leia?"

Leia turned and looked up at him. "Hey, Dad," she said.

"Can you come into my office, please?"

She furrowed her brows in confusion. "Sure."

Lincoln went to the door at the bottom of the stairs and opened it, snapping the light on. He took another drink as he went to the chair and sat. Leia came in and closed the door behind her, leaning against it. "What's up?"

Tipping the bottle back, Lincoln drained it. "Lemy's coming out. He'll be here tomorrow."

Leia blinked. "He is?" From the tone of her voice, she wasn't particularly happy to hear that...but she wasn't unhappy either. That didn't surprise him - though she and Lemy were polar opposites, like him and Lola, they were drawn to each other like magnets. Fire and gasoline, he called them. She couldn't leave him alone...and he couldn't leave her alone. He didn't think it was love, though, and never had been, even when they were young and inseparable. He didn't know what it was, and he didn't want to - he was a lot of things, but a daughter-fucking pedophiile was not one, and he didn't relish thinking too deeply about his children's romantic and sexual affairs. He did know one thing: It wasn't healthy, and with both of them being fuck ups, they would most likely try and pick up where they left off...having sex, fighting, yelling, and having more sex.

Their tumultuous relationship, and their inability to leave well enough alone when it came to each other, was one of the reasons Lincoln was having second thoughts about inviting Lemy to move back in. Their shouting matches were the stuff of nightmares, and Leia, like her mother, was fond of throwing things when she was really mad - vases, knick knacks, plates, and yes, even her fists. The most Lemy had ever done was shove her away when she lunged at him, and while Lincoln respected his son immensely for refusing to strike a woman, there were times he sorely hoped he would. Just one swift jab to the mouth - wake her up a little.

If Lemy moved back in, she'd be right there, the proverbial dog returning to its own vomit, and you know what gasoline does to fire.

"He is," Lincoln confirmed. "To sign the paperwork."

Leia blinked and darted her eyes to her feet. "Oh," she said, her voice small and shaken. "So...it's gonna be official."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Lincoln said with a nod.

Getting Leia to sign was almost as hard as getting Lemy to; she hemmed and hawed for months before her mother finally talked her into it. Lincoln suspected that she was counting on Lemy to never do add his signature, keeping the process in limbo so she wouldn't have to let go. Leia was a fuck up in a lot of ways, but she did genuinely love her daughter.

"He'll sign the adoption forms and Lori and I will have legal custody of Megan. And the others too," he added. Lizy's son, Lupa's daughter...all three of Lemy's children. "Nothing's going to change," he assured Leia now. "It'll just be...formal."

Leia's head bobbed quickly up and down, her throat working as she swallowed. "Yeah, okay, no, I mean, it's good." She flashed a wan smile.

"It is," Lincoln said. "They'll all be a lot better off."


	4. Children of Thalidomide

There are good days, and then there are bad days; sitting on her pink coverlet and trying but failing to focus on the novel before her, Meagan Loud couldn't decide which this day was. One minute she was happy that her father was coming home because she really missed him, then the next she wished he'd go away because she remembered how much he and Mom argued, and she didn't like it when they argued.

A thin, wispy girl with sandy blonde hair in a ponytail and thick glasses perched on her proud nose because she was very near-sighted, Meagan was ten, six when her father moved out of the house. She couldn't remember much about being that age (who was her best friend at the time?), but she could vividly recall lying awake in bed and listening to her parents screaming at each other in the next room, her tiny heart racing and her body trembling because she was terrified that soon, they would start screaming at her.

It wasn't even Dad she was worried about, it was her mom. When she and dad fought, she got into really bad moods; she'd sit at the kitchen table with her legs crossed and her foot jittering restlessly, her face set in an ugly scowl and tension so thick in the air it literally pressed against Meagan's chest like a dark hand. If you did something wrong, she snapped at you. Stop spilling things, goddamn it!; I'm not in the mood for this, go away!; and the dreaded you're just like your father even though Meagan didn't do anything.

Mom still had her moments, but they came much fewer and much farther between after Dad left, and even though Meagan missed him, she didn't miss the chaos.

Now Dad was coming back and it could very well start all over again.

It was only for a visit, she cautioned herself, that was all. Mom said he wanted to see her and her siblings so he was coming on a bus. Meagan wanted to see him and hug him and tell him all about her new life living with grandpa, but...even though it made her feel kind of bad...she didn't want him to live with them.

What if he did, though?

The prospect filled her with dread...dread tinged with a thin, silvery line of hope. If he was different, and Mom was too, then it'd be fine. They could get another trailer in the same park as auntie Lupa, just like before, and be a normal family. She'd miss grandpa and grandma and all her aunts, especially auntie Leni, and she'd really miss her brother Lucas, but to have her Mom and Dad happy and together would be worth it. Plus, they could always visit on the weekends like they used to.

Now she was even more confused and undecided than she was before. She blew a puff of air that rustled her bangs and adjusted her glasses, wincing when the clamp pinched the bridge of her nose. She hated these things: They were big, ugly, and slipped off every time she tilted her head forward. They were the only ones her mom's government health insurance would pay for, so she was stuck with them. Taking them off and throwing them in the trash like she did when she was little, pinching them between her thumb and forefinger like they were stinky, was out of the question, because unless something was really close, it was blurry and she'd be libel to trip and break her face. Grandpa called her Mr. Magoo; he was a cartoon character from way back who was blind as a bat and walked around with his arms out like a zombie. Poor guy, she knew just what that was like.

That wasn't even the worst part about having bad eyes - reading was. She loved to read, but after awhile she got a headache over her left eye and had to stop. Sometimes it only took a few minutes, and others she could read chapter after chapter, sitting on her bed or in the shade of the big oak in the backyard...then boom! Like being shot. That's usually when she grabbed Lucas for a game of make believe; setting the couch cushions on the living room floor and pretending they were Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi or reenacting swashbuckling sword fights from Treasure Island with cardboard wrapping paper tubes...until her asthma acted up and she had to stop. Or until he knocked her glasses clean off her head and then laughed when she shambled around trying to find them. He hit really hard for a five-year-old, and a couple times he broke them in half, which made Mom freak. You broke your glasses again?

Well, no, Mom, technically he broke them.

When her eyes and lungs combined to rob her of her two favorite pastimes, she always had thinking. She could spend hours lying on top of her covers and using her imagination - Mom said she was weird, but imagination is awesome, it can take you deep into the heart of a forbidden jungle, or all the way to robot pirate island. You could be a spacewoman, a cowgirl, or even a pirate.

She liked pirates a lot; they sailed the high seas and had adventures and got to stay up past 10pm if they wanted. Her favorite movie was Hook, it was about adult Peter Pan. She didn't care about him, though, she liked Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. Captain Hook got a bad reputation, but he wasn't such a bad guy. He...well...hmmm...heeeee was a snazzy dresser. That has to count for something, right? It did to Mom and Grandma. They were always talking about people's clothes and stuff, and always making her let them play with her hair and do her makeup. Meagan hated when they gave her elaborate hairstyles; they were so uncomfortable and top heavy, so that when she turned her head too quickly she almost lost her balance. The make-up was worse. She didn't mind lipstick too much, or rogue, but not eyeliner or that lash stuff. She didn't like people messing with her eyes - do you know how easy it would be for your make-up artist to slip and sink the pencil deep into your retina? Too easy. Way, way too easy.

She sighed and stared at the lines on the page; her head was starting to hurt even though she hadn't read very much, and the ink began running. Her English teacher, Mrs, Wadsworth, suggested she try reading Ray Bradbury - he writes about adventures in space, he'd be right up your alley - and she got a book of his short stories from the library. She wasn't overly enamored with him, though. Science fiction was okay, especially the soft stuff like Bradbury, but, eh, maybe she just wasn't in the frame of mind to really take it in. Her stomach was a roiling pit of anxiety and every time she tried to dip in her thoughts wandered. Hmmm. Were there any of auntie Lydia's cookies left over? Nothing clears your head and gets your mind off your worries quite like a chocolate chip cookie.

Closing the book and setting it aside, she shifted off the bed and to her feet, her hands instantly smoothing the front of her blue and white dress; Mom didn't like it when she walked around with wrinkles in her clothes, and after so much admonishment, Meagan acted on reflex alone.

She went into the hall and down the stairs, her hand trailing the bannister - she read a book once where a woman fell down the stairs and became a quadriplegic (that means your arms and legs don't work) and ever since she made a conscious effort to be careful on steps. She wasn't an overly nervous girl, but losing feeling from your neck down is serious stuff, who wouldn't want to take preventative measures?

A high, girlish scream rose sharply behind her, followed by a series of thumps, and she cringed. Something small and hard crashed into her, and she started to lose her balance. Her heart rocketed into her throat, and, reacting on instinct, she threw her self against the banister and held on tight, her glasses slipping from her face and falling, clattering to the end table below then onto the floor. A blurry figure rounded the newel post and streaked through the living room, the telltale crunch of glasses underfoot telling Meagan that...well...her glasses got crunched.

Aw, man.

"Lucas!"

Meagan turned and squinted up the stairs; a figure, like a vision glimpsed underwater, stood at the top. Meagan couldn't be sure, but it looked like its hands were sternly on its hips. "Smack him in the back of his head for me, will you?" auntie Lizy said.

Uh...no, she was not going to do that, but okay. "What did he do?" she asked.

"Little shit jumped off the dresser and elbowed me in the face," she said indignantly, her voice thick and slurred. She worked overnight as a waitress at an all-night truck stop on Route 10 and slept during the day. Or tried to, since Lucas liked to wake her up. It wasn't that he was unsupervised or anything, auntie Leni usually watched him, but he honestly enjoyed bothering his mom when she was trying to sleep. A few days ago, he and Meagan were going through the mess under her bed when she found a toy microphone: You talk into it and it echoes. He got excited and asked if he could have it, so she gave it to him because pffft, she was basically a grown up now, she didn't need it. An hour later on her way to the bathroom she passed Lizy's door, and there he was standing on the dresser, screaming into it as loud as he could and wiggling his hips, his audience being auntie Lizy humped under the covers, stirring and muttering curse words. She finally threw a pillow at him and knocked him onto the floor, where he laughed hysterically.

"O-Okay. I'll hit him." Meagan was lying, she wasn't going to hit her little brother. Unless he made her really mad, which did happen sometimes.

"Good," auntie Lizy said and disappeared, "make it hurt."

Alone, Meagan turned to go down the stairs, then remembered her glasses were broken. Luckily, she had an emergency pair.

In her nightstand.

In her room.

She sighed and hung her head.

Blasted poor eyesight.

Holding onto the rail, she slowly navigated up the stairs, her steps small and uncertain, her heart begging to pound as visions of her falling and snapping her spine in half danced mockingly through her head. Don't look down, don't look down.

Actually, if she did all she'd see was blur, so that was kind of beside the point.

At the top, she moved along the hall at a shuffle, her fingers trailing the wall. In her room, she toddled to her nightstand, opened the drawer, and rummaged around until she found her spare. They were even bigger and uglier than the last pair.

She slipped them onto her face and the world swam into focus. There. Her heart was still slamming and her chest felt tight. She took out her inhaler, stuck it into her mouth, and took a deep breath. Better safe than sorry.

Done, she dropped it back into the drawer, closed it, and went downstairs. Her glasses lay in three pieces on the carpet, the plastic frame splintered and the lenses broken beyond repair. Meagan stood mournfully over them like a woman over the body of a loved one, then squatted and scooped them into her slender hands. I never liked you before, she thought, but now that you're gone, I am stricken with grief.

Not really, but she sure wasn't happy about this.

Maybe she would smack Lucas in the back of his head.

***

Lupa Loud sat on the threadbare couch, grabbed her pack of Kools from the coffee table, and lit one, drawing the smoke into her lungs and releasing it through her nose. Warm early afternoon sunshine fell through the blinds and painted the tiny living room rich gold, its warmth lying across her shoulders like a blanket. She crossed her bare legs and took a sharp drag, her brow lowering over her dark, stormy eyes. On TV, canned laughter accompanied a fat man falling down. She hated sitcoms because they were all the same and had been for eighty years, but she couldn't find the remote and she didn't feel like changing the channel manually, so...ha ha ha ha ha.

Not that she gave a shit what was on, she had more important things to worry about.

Last night, before she went to work, Mom called.

Lemy was coming into town to sign the adoption paperwork.

Honestly, she didn't know how to feel about that. In a way she was glad that her father would have legal custody - he was far better off financially than she was - but she really, really didn't want to see Lemy.

Too many bad memories.

She leaned forward and tipped the cigarette in a glass ashtray; her head was starting to ache and her eyes felt like they were coated in sand. She worked the 3-11 shift at Oak Springs nursing home in Elk Park and could never fall asleep until 5am after getting home, so being up before two wasn't something she liked or was used to. Sleep came harder than usual, though, and she laid awake in bed well into the soft purple light of morning before dropping off, only to snap awake again and again. She and Lemy had not been on good terms in years, and he knew something about her...something that she had told no one else, something that she struggled to forget, something that she was terrified he'd either let slip or intentionally tell everyone to get back at her. He swore he never would, but he was too unpredictable, especially when he drank.

That was her main reason for not wanting him here.

With a sigh, she sat back and crossed her legs again; she was naked save for an oversized wool sweater than slid down one shoulder. She picked it up at the Goodwill and used it as pajamas. It was itchy at first but she got used to it; beggars can't be choosers.

The front door opened, and she looked over as Luya slipped in, followed by her friend Skylar. The latter was a short, fat red head in a pink hoodie and jeans so tight they made her legs look like overstuffed sausage casings. The former was short and thin, twelve but small for her age; her long hair was dyed bottle black save for a single white skunk strip that annoyed the hell out of Lupa every time she saw it, and her brows were angled down in the most manufactured display of sullenness Lupa had ever seen. She wore black jeans with holes in the knees and a ratty black T-shirt over a plaid button up with fraying cuffs; Lupa couldn't help but roll her eyes at her daughter. She reminded her of the tryhard posers she and her friends used to make fun of in school, and there were times she was embarrassed to be seen with her in public.

Lupa looked hurriedly away and focused on the screen. She never looked too hard at Luya's face because she didn't like what she saw there.

Like Lemy, bad memories swirled around her in a choking, noxious cloud, and in her darker moods, Lupa almost wished he'd taken her with him.

Neither girl spoke as they closed the door behind them and went down the hall to Luya's room, the floor creaking sickly under them. The trailer, a single wide on a dusty dirt road surrounded by others of its like, was prefabricated in the year 2004, and had been sitting in its current location since 2032. The electrical wiring was fried and barely worked, there was a gaping hole in the bathroom floor, the doors stuck, the carpet was matted with decades of spills, and things had a way of falling apart at the slightest provocation. It looked even worse on the outside, the white metal siding covered in wide rust spots, the skirting missing in places, and the front sagging as if exhausted after a long, hardscrabble life.

The girls disappeared into Luya's room and shut the door, and Lupa sucked the filter of her cigarette like a woman seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle. She and Luya didn't have a very good relationship; they were like roommates at this point...or two nations who [barely] tolerated each other but could devlove into war at any moment. Lupa tried to be friendly with her daughter, but Luya was going through a little teenage attitude phase, and the last thing she felt like dealing with was being talked down to by a fucking twelve-year-old. She worked long, hard, backbreaking hours to support her, and Luya didn't appreciate any of it; nothing Lupa gave her was ever good enough, and nothing she did was ever right, and when Lupa did speak to her, Luya's tone was always dismissive and dripping with sarcasm. I hate living in this trashy ass trailer, she told Lupa during their last fight.

Then go live with your father.

Pffft. He's even worse than you are.

Lupa had never come closer to punching someone in her life. She kept telling herself to be patient with her, that she was just upset about Lemy leaving, but the more Luya pushed, the more Lupa wanted to strangle her. She worked doubles three times a week, she drove a clunker piece of shit that broke down every fifty miles, and she constantly went without so that Luya could have...by the end of the day, her nerves were shot, and she didn't have patience.

She drew one final drag and stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, then sat back and crossed her arms again. It was cold despite the sun; she kept the heat low to cut down on cost, and every winter they froze. She didn't know which was worse: That or sweltering in the summer. Probably sweltering - you can always put more on, but you can only take so much off. There were a few times she didn't have the money to pay the electric bill and they got cut off. Lupa didn't mind it herself, but Luya did nothing but piss and moan the whole time. I can't charge my phone, wah. I'm missing my favorite show. I wanna go to grandpa's house.

Then go.

And when she did, she made damn sure to tell everyone they didn't have power like the goddamn little tattletale she was. Dad would take her aside and offer her money, but she never took it. No, it's fine, I just forgot to pay, that's all. She hated taking from him, literally fucking despised it; the few times she did, she felt two inches tall afterward. Poor charity case Lupa can't take care of herself or her daughter, she needs Daddy to help, just like he helped buy the trailer...and the car...and groceries more than once. She knew her aunts all thought that; when she went over to the house, she could feel them silently judging her, especially Lola. She thought she was so much better than everyone else, but without Dad she was just a washed-up beauty queen running a failing small town hair salon.

She absently slipped another cigarette out of her pack and lit it for something to do, her hands trembling as she sparked the lighter. She hoped Lemy wouldn't be in before she went to work; if she could avoid him while he was here, she would. She was dropping Luya off on the way in, though, and there was a good chance she'd have to see him, or even talk to him.

A shudder raced down her spine.

Deep in the pit of her stomach, though, something stirred like the faint kiss of butterfly wings. Longng, perhaps? There was a point where she loved Lemy, and thought that maybe, despite his issues, they could be together, a point when she honestly wanted them to be together.

Then she woke up one morning and smelled the coffee - actually, she didn't, because the bastard stole her coffee pot and hocked it for drug money...along with her TV, her stero, and the old X-Station Dad gave Luya. He broke in through a window while she and Luya slept, carried the shit out the front door, and loaded it into someone's car. Lemy told her later that his buddy Gordon was driving, and he paid him with a twenty he slipped from her purse.

Then he laughed.

And she slapped the shit out of him.

He wasn't that bad in the beginning, he always drank too much but she accepted it because he was a good man otherwise. Or so she thought. As time wore on, he got worse...or maybe the blinders started to slip off. Who knows? She didn't. When they got together, she was in a bad way and she needed him, so who's to say she didn't delude herself? A drowning women doesn't take the time to interrogate the person throwing her a life ring; she grabs it with both hands and holds on. Once upon a time, he tossed her a life ring, and she didn't look too closely at it.

Letting him into her heart was the biggest mistake she ever made.

She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out, and got up. At the TV, she hit the power button, then went into her room through the kitchen, turning slightly sideways to pass between the table and the edge of the counter. The sticky linoleum floor popped under her bare feet and her big toe caught one bent corner of the rusted floor vent; pain exploded in the center of her skull and she hissed over clenched teeth. "Shit." She drew her foot back and looked at it; the skin wasn't broken, so at least she didn't have to worry about tetanus. Check that off the list.

In her room, she went to one of the bulging black trash bags piled in the space between the bed and the closet and opened it; the clothes inside were wrinkled but clean courtesy of the laundromat. She had a washer and dryer, but neither worked: The washer didn't wash and the dryer didn't dry. Typical.

She sat the bag on the bed and rummaged through it, pushing aside pants, shirts, underwear, and socks in search of a uniform top or bottom, whichever came first. When she did laundry, Luya insisted that their clothes not mix - she had to have her own cycle because she didn't want her stuff contaminated by mom germs or something. She also wouldn't eat anything Lupa cooked; though lazy as shit, she made her own dinner every night - Hot Pockets, Bagel Bites, and the occasional box of Kraft macaroni and cheese if she was feeling energetic.

You know, it was really easy sometimes to think her daughter hated her guts.

Pulling out a light blue scrub top, she sighed.

Next, she shifted through until she found matching pants, then pulled the sweater over her head, tossed it aside, and got dressed, neglecting underwear because thinking of Luya depressed her and she just didn't give a shit. She pulled out a ball of socks and selected two - one dark green and the other dark purple. She held them up, looked from one to the other, and wondered what it was like to have a life where having matching socks was a real concern. She had so much other shit weighing her down that the thought of caring whether her fucking socks were the same color or not seemed a strange and mystifying custom practiced in an odd place far, far away. She thought of her aunt Lola - she was exactly the type of woman who'd care; if her socks didn't match it'd be the end of the world and she'd throw a temper tantrum like a spoiled, overgrown child. Pfft. Must be nice when your biggest problem is something so fucking trivial.

She yanked them on, slipped into her Crocs, and grabbed her purse from the nightstand, making sure to count her money. Fifty-two dollars to last until her next check...in nearly a week. She sighed again; she needed gas for the car, groceries, and cigarettes.

Her chest clutched in mild panic. God, if she didn't have cigarettes, she'd go crazy.

That was something she'd have to worry about later. Right now she just wanted to get Luya to Mom and Dad's. One step at a time in this life; anything more and you'd trip.

Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she went into the living room then down the hall to Luya's door; it was flimsy, splintered, and didn't hang right in the frame; it wouldn't close all the way and if you forced it, it got stuck. It was like that when they moved in, but Luya slamming it all the time in her little bitch fits only made it worse. She started to knock, but said fuck it; she paid the bills here, not her daughter. She opened it and poked her head in: Luya lay stretched out on the bed with one knee propped up and her arm bent behind her head, her face glowering at the water splotched ceiling. Skyler sat next to her, swiping the screen of her phone.

The smell of mold, mildew, and other, less nameable things washed over Lupa, and her face puckered in disgust. Clothes, empty CD jewel cases, and bits of trash littered the matted carpet. Torn and yellowed posters of stupid emo bands plastered the wood paneled walls, and a stack of dirty plates and empty glasses crowded the nightstand. A rush of indignation colored Lupa's face and she started to snap, but stopped herself. If Luya wanted to live in a fucking pigsty, let her; they already had roaches, what more could her filth really add?

Skyler looked up but Luya did not. She didn't like looking at Lupa as much as Lupa didn't like looking at her. "We gotta go," Lupa said.

Before Luya could protest - or, more likely, completely ignore her - she withdrew.

Fifteen minutes later, Lupa sat in the driveway behind the wheel of her battered 2025 Intrepid, watching the front door and smoking, the driver window cracked just enough for her to tip her ash. The radio was on, music whispering from the speakers like the midnight voices of tortured phantoms. She smiled wryly at how melodramatic that sounded, then frowned. "Fucking asshole," she spat and laid her hand on the horn. If Luya didn't hurry up, she was going to go back in there and drag her out by her skunk hair. The DON at Oak Springs (director of nurses) was a big, fat, hateful woman named Debbie, and if Lupa was so much as two minutes late, she'd come waddling down the hall and corner her at the time clock. You're late. Again. Don't you know what time you're supposed to be here?

Lupa hated that bitch.

With a passion.

She took a drag and the front door opened, Skyler coming out first, followed by Luya. They nodded to one another, and Skyler hurried down the stairs then across the yard, disappearing between two trailers with a glance over her shoulder. Lupa didn't like that little bitch; she was another disrespectful little shit.

Hands in her pockets and gaze downcast, Luya walked over to the car at the speed of angst, her feet not never lifting from the ground. By the time she slid in, hot anger throbbed in Lupa's chest like fire and it took everything she had not to say something. She threw the car into reverse and backed out into the street, her cigarette jutting from her thin lips and the smoke stinging her eyes. She spun the wheel, turned left, and started down the dirt lane; decaying trailers, all just as bad or worse than theirs, lined the way like ancient tombstones in a forgotten cemetery.

They were on Route 15 into town when Luya finally spoke, her voice a low, monotonous grumble. "I don't know why I have to do this."

Lupa flicked her cigarette out the window. "Because your father wants to see you."

"I dont wanna see him," she sneered.

Lupa took a deep, steadying breath. It was hard for Luya to not have a father in her life, and Lupa felt bad for her. She and her own father weren't particularly close, but he was there during her childhood, and it wasn't until Lemy left that she realized just how important that was to a child's development. Third wave feminists tout single motherhood almost as a preferable alternative to the traditional nuclear family. Yes, a woman can raise a child on her own, but the ability of her to do so does not make the arrangement desirable. A child needs both parents. Luya didn't have that, and even if she wouldn't say, it bothered her.

But of course she couldn't just be happy that her father was in town, no, she had to be sullen and resentful because that's how she hid her pain. She thought she was slick with that shit, but she wasn't - Lupa herself once did the same thing. "I know," she said, "but he's still your father and -"

"No he's not," Luya said, staring out the window. Her shimmering reflection painted the glass. "He stopped being my father the day he left us."

Lupa sighed. She wasn't wrong, and she wasn't wrong to be upset with him, though Lupa wished she wouldn't be. Just suck it up, will you? "Everyone makes mistakes," she said lamely, "life is hard, and fucking it up is real easy."

"Umhm."

Maybe it was Lupa's imagination, but she thought she detected an accusatory hint, like Luya was saying Yeah, Mom, I know, I watch you do it all the time. Lupa's grip tightened on the wheel, her knuckles turning white and her lips pursing. Every time she tried, this is what Luya did. Every fucking time.

Which is why she rarely tried anymore.

When they reached Mom and Dad's house, she pulled to the curb, drew another cigarette from her pack, and lit it. "Try to be a little forgiving with him, okay?" she said around the filter. "You don't have to be daddy's little girl or anything, but don't be a fucking dick either."

"Yeah," Luya mumbled and got out.

"Have a -"

She slammed the door and started across the yard, her hands slipping into her pockets and her head hanging. Lupa narrowed her eyes and watched her go, the urge of slap her across the back of the head doing battle with the urge to pull her into a tight, fierce hug.

Instead of doing either, she put the car in DRIVE and pulled away from the curb. Maybe later, she thought.

Maybe.

***

Meagan sat aside the Crayon and scrunched her lips to the side as she considered the picture before her. It didn't look much like a pirate ship, but it would have to do. Her art skills weren't the best, however she did like drawing, so naturally she would get better over time. At least that's how it's supposed to work. She glanced at her little brother; he was bent over his own piece of art, the tip of his tongue plastered to his upper lip in concentration and a purple Crayon clutched in a white-knuckled death grip. A lank spill of messy brown hair fell across his forehead, and his little feet kicked back and forth, his heels hitting the wood piece connecting the front legs of his chair. Was there a technical name for those things? There must be, everything has a name, but Meagan didn't know what it was. Well, she'd have to change that; she liked learning new things, and not knowing what something is called irritated her because you can't articulate yourself very well if you don't even know what you're talking about.

That would have to wait, though; she wanted to see what her little brother was drawing. It must be something important if it kept him from fidgeting and getting up after two minutes. She leaned over and craned her neck to see his paper, her mouth dropping open in a perfect O of surprise when she saw a pirate ship that made hers look like puke. It wasn't the most perfect pirate ship ever, but it was far and away better than her pirate ship. Envy filled her and she pursed her lips in frustration. Didn't auntie Lizy say she could hit him? She didn't want to before but she sure did now.

Sensing her, he covered his paper with his arms and shot her a dirty look, his big brown eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. "No," he said simply.

"I wasn't looking," Meagan lied and went back to staring at her own drawing. It looked even worse now, and she blew a puff of air.

"Yes, you were," he accused, "you're not a'possed to look at other people's stuff."

"I didn't see anything," Meagan said with a shrug, then her jealousy got the better of her. "Except some chicken scratch."

Lucas glared at her. "It's not chicken scratch." He was silent for a moment. "What's chicken scratch?"

She started to reply, but realized that she didn't know. Sure, she knew that it meant bad, sloppy, you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself but where did that saying come from? Chickens had claws so they had to scratch the ground when they walked, which would probably leave marks behind. Hm. That had to be it. She didn't really feel like explaining it, though; she and her poorly drawn pirate ship had a pity party to get to. "It means it's a very nice drawing."

Lucas's face brightened. "Thanks!" He whipped his head around and started working on it with renewed vigor, as if heartened by her encouragement, which made her feel kind of bad for calling it chicken scratch. "I'm almost done, I just gotta add the thingie and the other thing."

The thingie and the other thing, huh? He didn't even know what the parts of a ship were called, but he could draw them better than she could. It wasn't fair, She picked up her glass and took a long drink; the milk was getting warm and yucky, but the mushy chunks of cookies leftover from snack were still good. She sat it down and looked at the clock on the wall: It was just after two. Fifteen minutes ago, auntie Leni left to go pick up Dad in Detroit, and soon he was going to be here. A ripple of anxiety went through Meagan's stomach, and she turned back to her picture.

Being the kind of girl who liked having the ability to articulate herself, she took a moment to shift through her emotions like a woman untangling the biggest, nastiest knot ever. She was scared that things would go back to the way they were, but the more she thought about it, the more she hoped they could kind of go back, only without all the yelling and throwing stuff. She missed her dad a lot and sometimes it made her sad that he wasn't around to do stuff with, like reading her bedtime stories. She was a little old for that, but she wouldn't complain one bit if he did. And imagine the possibilities of having a third guy around...he, her, and Lucas could have the most epic cardboard-tube-deathmatches ever recorded. And maybe, when everyone else was asleep, she could crawl into his lap like she used to when she was little, and they could watch TV together; she kind of really missed the safe, warm feeling of being in his arms. She was smart enough to know that dads are just normal guys, but when he held her, she felt like literally nothing in the world could hurt her, not even a nuclear bomb like the one we dropped on Japan.

Except his beer breath. That didn't hurt, though, it just made her nose crinkle.

In addition to all that, she was just nervous. It had been so long since she saw him; it felt like it was going to be weird. Should she run up and hug him, or play it cool? She supposed it would depend on which emotion was dominant when she saw him.

Was she overthinking this? She did that sometimes. It was like a curse, because once she started thinking too much, she got tangled like a fly in a web until she was hanging upside down and screaming for help.

She should think about something else.

"Done!" Lucas cried and slapped the Crayon down.

Like Picasso over there. He was a really good artist but he didn't like sitting still long enough to really do anything; he'd rather run through the house, jump on stuff, jump off stuff, climb stuff, fall from stuff, trip over stuff, and knock stuff over. That was a big one; if it could possibly be knocked over, he'd knocked it over at least once. Including people. I only draw things I love, he told her one time, which, she guessed, was incentive enough.

"Can I see it?" she asked.

"No!" he cried. "I forgot something!" He picked the Crayon up and started to draw again.

Meagan looked at the clock. Two minutes had gone by. Two minutes closer to Dad time. Two minutes closer to seeing if maybe he could live with them again.

Now she was nervous again; it burst against the inside of her chest like vomit, and she realized she needed to talk about it. "Did, uh, your mom tell you about Dad?" she asked.

"Umhm," Lucas said with a nod, "he's coming here."

He didn't sound like he cared one way or the other, which confused Meagan. "Aren't you nervous? You've basically never met him." Lucas was barely four when Dad moved to the city. Did he even remember Dad? She didn't remember anything from when she was four. Some stuff, she guessed, but it was really hazy and disjointed.

The little boy shook his head. "No."

"Really?" she asked. He was a better artist than her and he wasn't consumed with nerves the way she was. Humph.

He nodded. "Yep." He slapped the Crayon down again and held out his picture.

Meagan looked at it then at him.

He shook it. "Here," he insisted and beamed brightly.

Really? Did he have to rub her face in how much better he was?

She took the paper and looked at it. A beautifully rendered pirate ship, sails puffed with wind and the masthead done in exquisite detail. Two stick figures stood on the poop deck, one small with messy brown hair and the other slightly less small with big glasses and a ponytail; she wore a pirate hat slouched slightly to one side and held a cutlass in her hand. An arrow pointed her her with the childish legend: BEST KAPTEN EVER.

"That's you," he said proudly and pointed.

Meagan's heart swelled and she smiled. He might be hyper and really annoying sometimes, but then he did really sweet things like this that made up for it. He was like a Sour Patch kid. "Thank you," she said earnestly. "I love it."

"I'm your first mate and we just got back from Hungry Pirate Island," he said with an air of wonder.

Meagan laughed at his serious expression. "What's Hungry Pirate Island?"

"It's a restaurant," he said, "on an island. You had a cheeseburger and I had chicken nuggets."

Lucas loved chicken nuggets, they were his favorite meal ever. She liked cheeseburgers, plain, because who wants to bite into a yucky, drippy tomato? Or, oh God, an onion? Those things were the worst, they made her eyes water and her throat swell up like a balloon. She wasn't allergic to them or anything, they were just really gross. And spicy. Why did people even like them? She wanted her food to taste like food, not dirty armpits.

"Sounds like a good lunch," she said.

"Yep. It was really good." He turned to face the table, grabbed another piece of paper, and picked up his Crayon again.

Then set it back down and looked at her, his forehead crinkling in confusion. "Meagan?"

For some reason he reminded her of a lost little puppy dog, and she felt bad for him. "What?" she asked.

He didn't immediately reply, instead he scrunched his lips from side to side in thought. "What's my dad like?"

Ah, so he didn't remember Dad, or at least not very well. "He's…" she started, then flicked her eyes to the ceiling as she considered. What was Dad like? Other than big and strong and like a safe harbor in a storm. She tried to recall his personality, but struggled. He was fun and loved playing; he never got mad at her or yelled like Mom used to do; he told really funny jokes; sometimes he fell asleep on the floor, in the bathroom, and once on the front lawn (she learned about narcolepsy from a book and wondered if he had it); and one time, she thought she remembered him peeing on himself, which was kind of embarrassing, but accidents happen. She, uh, peed on herself a couple months ago. It wasn't her fault, though; she drink a lot of juice at school then it all hit her on the walk home. "He's…" she started, but a low, rumbling voice cut her off.

"A fucking prick."

Meagan looked over her shoulder and tensed. Luya stood in the threshold to the dining room, her hands at her sides and her eyes slitted like a snake. Luya was her sister but she lived with her mom on the other side of town, so they weren't really close; even if they did live near one another, Luya wasn't very warm. Meagan didn't think she'd ever hugged her older sister, and she imagined that if she did, it would be like hugging a cactus.

That's been in the freezer for a hundred years.

After being dipped in corrosive acid.

Normally if someone cussed in front of Lucas, she'd admonish them because come on, he's a kid, he doesn't need to hear that (and maybe she didn't like hearing it either...because it reminded her of her Mom and Dad being mad at each other), but she didn't have the courage to do that to Luya. Honestly, Luya kind of scared her. She was bigger, older, and Meagan always got the impression she was one sharp poke away from punching someone.

Still, she couldn't let her talk about Dad like that and get away with it. "He is not," she said, her voice a mix of indignation and trepidation.

"Yes he is," Luya said and crossed to the fridge. "He left us because he doesn't love us."

Lucas blinked as if struck, and Meagan gasped, then glared. "That is not true."

"Totally true," Luya declared. She opened the door, bent, and rummaged around, sifting the contents heedlessly back and forth, knocking over bottles and cans and spilling a container of baking soda with a sneer of contempt, as though it were to blame, not her. "You're just delusional."

"No, I'm not not," Meagan said. Anger squeezed her chest like a fiery hand; Luya was always downtalking Dad...if she was talking him at all. Maybe she was big and tough and didn't want a father, but Meagan wasn't. She was kind of a dweeb or something, and dweebs like hanging out with their dads, she guessed. "He just..." she didn't know what he was, but it was not a P-word.

Luya pulled out a Go-Gurt and slammed the door closed with her hip. "He's just a loser," she said, "like you."

Meagan flinched, and Lucas's face darkened. He whipped around and gave Luya the dirtiest look he could muster, which, if you asked Meagan, was too cute to be really dirty. "She is not - hey, that's mine! I hid it for me!"

One step ahead and anticipating his response, Meagan nodded sharply. "Yeah, I am not - wait, you hid a Go-Gurt?"

Go-Gurts were one of the sweetest treats life had to offer, and suddenly dumb Luya and her dumb attitude didn't matter as much anymore. Hiding a Go-Gurt like a thieving bildred was a high crime punishable by keelhauling in her book.

Stricken, Lucas shrugged. "I hid one for you too...but then I ate it."

Luya rolled her eyes and shook her head like they were the two biggest dorks ever, then she went into the living room.

"Why did you hide them?" Meagan asked. "We're the only ones who eat them."

"Nuh-uh," he said defensively, "I caught your mom eating one when I came down for a midnight snack one time."

Oh. For some reason, that did not surprise her. Mom seemed like the type who'd sneak Go-Gurts from the fridge when no one was looking, then pretend that they were icky and for kids the rest of the time.

She sighed. "Alright. I guess you have a point. Not that it matters since...Luya...got it." She pronounced her sister's name with sour distaste, and threw a worried glance over her shoulder, certain that the older girl would be standing there, summoned like Bloody Mary when you say her name in the mirror. She was not.

"Yeah," Lucas said glumly, "I woulda gave it to you, though."

Even though she was the one who got robbed of a delicious cotton-candy flavored Go-Gurt, he looked so sad that she wound up consoling him. "It's okay," she said, "I'll ask Grandma to get some more."

Mom liked saying no, Meagan had learned, but Grandma didn't even have that word in her vocabulary (she must have missed school that day). When ever she asked for something, Grandma pinched her cheek really hard and said anything for my little princess. When she was younger, she used to say I'm not a princess, I'm a pirate (or a spacegirl, or a policegirl, whatever she felt like that day), and Grandma would laugh. Of course you are. She didn't like getting half her face ripped off, but it was a small price to pay for yummy Go-Gurts.

Lucas perked up. "Can we get the strawberry kind this time?"

Meagan took his chubby cheek between her thumb and forefinger and squeezed...hard. "Anything for my first mate."

He yelped, shot out his arm, and rammed his palm into her shoulder; she sucked a sharp intake of breath through her teeth and her glasses fell from her face, landing on the table.

Okay, she was really going to smack him in the back of the head this time.


	5. Homecoming

Lemy stepped off the bus at 2:45pm, two hours later than he was supposed to: In Italy, the trains run on time like clockwork, in America, the buses run behind like clockwork. He didn't know why, they made, like, four stops, but he couldn't say he minded...every moment he was on the road was a moment he wasn't standing in front of his kids and feeling like the world's biggest piece of shit because hey, here I am, two years later.

When he got on in New York, he was full of nerves, but by the time the bus sailed across the Michigan state line, he seethed with them, his stomach twisting and turning like a wet dishrag and his heart racing faster and faster until he could hear it, a sick, steady buh-DUMP, buh-DUMP, buh-DUMP. He tried to focus on the countryside flashing past the window, but his mind kept going to his children; he spent two years wanting to be a good father but maybe kind of not really trying...the longing wasn't new, nor was the vague guilt, but the burning, all consuming shame was. He imagined walking through the front door and finding them lined up waiting for him, hurt and accusation in their eyes. Why did you leave us, Daddy? He tried to imagine his response, but couldn't...because he didn't have one. When he left Royal Woods two years ago, he was angry - Lupa was mad at him, Leia was mad at him, Dad was mad at him, and no matter what he did, every time he tried to be better, he fucked it up. He fumed with hatred, pointed both in and out, and with panic, because, subconsciously, he saw his life crashing down around him and he knew that he couldn't stop it. He didn't leave so much as he fled, like a pioneer striking west in search of a new, better life.

Or maybe he was being kinder to himself than he deserved.

He wasn't sure, but at the time, leaving made sense. He thought he would come back soon, surly no more than a couple months, and everything would be okay: He'd somehow have a good job, decent money, a nice place to live with extra bedrooms so the kids could come visit. In fact, sitting in the seat of a Greyhound, maybe even this selfsame one, he built magnificent yet shadowy castles in the sky, the future dim and indistinct, but promising nevertheless.

Yeah.

It didn't work out.

And on some level, he always knew that it wouldn't.

When he spotted the first sign for Detroit, white text on a green background and hanging from an overpass, a pang cut through his heart. 150 miles until he was there...another twenty-five to the Royal Woods town limit...three to the house on Franklin Avenue: 178 miles until he would have to face his children.

Maybe coming here was a mistake. Maybe he should get off at the next stop and go somewhere else, anywhere else; he could crashland in one of the endless small towns strung out along the interstate, get a job washing dishes, sleep in someone's shed, and then fall in love with someone's pretty daughter; they could get married, have kids, and start over. This time, he could get it right, this time he could be better.

The thought was appealing, but repellent at the same time - appealing because, God, a second chance sounded nice and repellant because he couldn't just leave his children like that, forget they existed like they were mistakes. They weren't.

He was the mistake.

From the time he was young to even now, he blundered his way through life, leaving things broken and burning behind him. King Midas (was he in the Bible?) turned everything he touched to gold. Lemy Loud turned everything he touched to shit. If he touched their lives, he'd turn those to shit too. They'd be better off without him.

But he couldn't turn his back on them.

Then again, isn't that what he was doing right now? He wasn't driving out for a nice weekend visit full of laser tag, ice cream, and bonding, he was coming to sign them over to Dad, to put into writing, in the most official way possible, that he was shit...and that he couldn't care for them, wouldn't care for them.

During that last 150 miles to Detroit, Lemy spent a lot of time in the onboard bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet lid and drinking from a warm, half-empty bottle of Canadian Mist. By the time the bus pulled into the depot on Brickhouse Street, a row of vacant lots and abandoned factories almost identical to the one he just left, he was fuzzy and unsteady on his feet, his steps lurching and his path wavering. The station was a low brick building with an overhang covering a breezeway where people milled, smoked, and talked into cell phones as they waited for their departure. The air was crisper than it had been in New York, its edge sharper; Lemy exhaled, and his breath puffed faintly out before him in a thin white cloud. Numbness crept into his brain, and he smiled wanly to himself as he made his way to a bench and sat.

He was still nervous, but not as badly as before. In fact, the more he turned the idea over in his head, the more excited he became. He had long missed playing with Meagan. What she lacked in physicalities, she more than made up for in spunk and imagination: He used to cover kitchen chairs with sheets, and they would spend hours pretending to be in a submarine exploring the ocean floor, or in a rocket, or navigating their way through catacombs beneath an Egyptian pyramid. He had no idea where she got it - he wasn't very creative, and Leia was just as shallow as her mother; her body was a 10.10 but her brain was a 3.5. She wasn't dumb, quite the opposite in fact, but she was materialistic and all about her looks, not very deep, a trickling brook who somehow birthed a vast river in the form of Meagan. Two blondes make a blonde baby, and two black people make a black baby - how two dumbasses like him and Leia made Meagan he would never know, but he was proud of his daughter and loved her to death. Beauty, brains...she almost had it all.

She was only missing brawn. She was farsighted and had really bad asthma when she was younger; from the rare conversation with Leia, it was mostly cleared up now, but she still had the occasional attack. She was also small for her age, and always had been: She was born prematurely and barely weighed five pounds. She spent the first week of her life in an incubator at the NICU, and despite all the horrible shit that had happened to him over the years, that was the worst. He remembered sitting next to the machine and staring at her through the plastic side, worry gnawing him from the inside out and his eyes leaking like the broken faucets in one of the motel rooms he'd lived in. She was so small, so fragile, and seeing her like that scared him sober for almost two years - for the first time in his life, he didn't want to drink or drug, he wanted to hold his little girl and be the father she deserved.

Then he fucked it up like he fucked everything up.

Sighing, he slipped his cigarette pack from his jacket pocket, shook one out, and cupped it against the wind as he sparked the cheap plastic lighter against the end. He drew the smoke into his lungs, held it, then let it out. He texted Dad and people-watched as he waited for a response; a fat black woman with dyed red hair yelled abrasively into a cell phone, and an old man in a Members Only jacket stood with his hands in his pockets, impatiently scanning the interstate off ramp, looking, presumably, for his bus. Sit down, pops, it'll be here when it gets here, okay? God, people were so uptight about shit. Why thrash and fight against something you can't change? Why can't you just accept that your bus is gonna be late, or that it's raining…

...or that you're a hopeless piece of shit.

His mood darkened and he took a deep drag. His phone buzzed in his lap, and he picked it up to find a text from Dad. Leni should be there soon.

Oh, thank God, they sent aunt Leni. Whew. She was literally the only person in the family he could imagine himself being 100 percent comfortable with right now. Anyone else, and it'd be a long, awkward ride back to Royal Woods; aunt Leni was what you might call a cinnamon roll...sweet and sugary. She never judged, she never talked behind your back, she never stopped caring about you and never, ever called you mean names. She was pureness and goodness personified.

Which made her easy to swindle.

He hated himself for it, but there were times in the past that he took advantage of her unending kindness...and her ditziness. He'd ask for twenty dollars, wait a little while, then ask again. I thought I, like, already gave it to you.

No, auntie Leni, you forgot.

Oh, totes sorry. Then she'd pat his head and call him her favorite nephew or something, which made him feel so fucking dirty.

That was the past, though. He was still a fuck-up hated and loathed by the universe, but he was done hurting his family, even the members who deserved it, like Dad, Mr. I'm-So-Much-Better-Than-You. He was a goddamn insufferable prick, but Lemy just didn't have it in him to fight the guy anymore. He didn't want to be mad and upset, he didn't want to turn everything he touched to shit, he didn't want to ruin anyone's life anymore.

Coming here was the right decision.

Signing those papers was the right decision.

He threw his cigarette to the ground, and the wind rolled it away.

It was another twenty minutes before he spotted auntie Leni's car pulling into the parking lot, a canary yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a smiley face topper on the antenna that bobbed jauntily back and forth with the motion of the tires. Bumper stickers covered the back end: HONK IF YOU'RE HAPPY; a bumble bee next to the legend BEE KIND; FREE HUGS; and a giant pink heart. Oh, God; he wasn't surprised she still had that dumb car (it was only a few years old when he left), but he was kind of hoping she wasn't in it. This was Detroit, and anyone riding around in an upbeat eyesore like that was liable to get to shot.

She pulled to the curb a little down from him, and he got up, dropping his current cigarette and stepping on it as he started over. The driver door opened, and she got out, a tall, thin woman in jeans and a rich forest green sweater; her blonde hair fell down the back of her shoulders in a gentle sweep, and her blues eyes sparkled with delight. She was fiftysomething - only a year younger than Lori - but she resembled a woman barely into her late thirties. Being as good-natured and...comparatively simple...as she was, the stress and rigors of life did not affect her as greatly as it did other people. She never worried, she never stewed, and if she was angry, she always got over it before bedtime; was it any wonder that she didn't age?

Her face glowed and she trembled like a small, excitable dog. Lemy couldn't suppress a smile; he couldn't remember the last time someone was that happy to see him. They either looked at him like he was garbage, sighed and rolled their eyes...or ignored him completely. "Hi, Lemy!" Before he could reply, she threw her arms around him and squeezed. She was strong for a cinnamon roll, and Lemy's eyes bugged out of his head as she crushed him against her.

"Hi," he said and returned the hug.

She let him go and held him at arm's length, staring up at him with giddy eyes. "It's been a long time, how are you? Lincy said you're coming to sign papers and you're going to stay with us for a couple days and I was, like, totes excited because you're my favorite nephew and I really missed you. How was the city? Did you, like, see lots of famous people and stuff?"

Two years isn't a long time, but it's long enough to forget how much your aunt prattles when she's excited. He started to say something, but she cut him off. "Tell me in the car."

Five minutes later they were heading north on the interstate. Leni sat ramrod straight behind the wheel, her hands perfectly at ten and two and her eyes pointed firmly at the road. Mom told him once that Leni failed her driver's test more times than Spongebob, but Lemy always found that a little hard to believe as she was the most by-the-book driver he'd ever seen. If the posted speed limit was 35, brother, she went exactly 35. She followed the rules to the letter, even in those not-so-uncommon cases where they need to be broken; in fact, she didn't even turn the radio on because it might distract her. But she did talk. And listen. "What's it like?" she asked of New York City. "I always wanted to go there but never, like, had the time."

Lemy stared out the window at the economically depressed neighborhoods of South Detroit clustered beneath the raised highway, grimy, boarded up buildings rotting on either side of narrow, pock-marked streets. His drunk was starting to burn off like ground fog in the morning sun, and those ghettos down there looked the way he felt. "It was okay," he lied. "Central Park's really pretty in the fall." He had no idea what Central Park looked like in the fall - he spent two years within walking distance and never once visited. He never visited the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, or the One World Trade Center either. Like a million other New Yorkers, he was too busy trying to hold his life together to run around Manhattan playing tourist.

"It looks really pretty on TV," Leni said and changed lanes to go around a lumbering Mac truck. "Did you ever go up in one of the real tall buildings? Those are scary. I wouldn't want to." A shiver raced through her body.

"No, I never did," he said.

"I'd be scared of, like, that thingie happening where the airplanes crashed and all the people had to jump out the windows or burn up. Those poor people, that was so awful."

A black and white cop car with its sirens blaring appeared behind them; Leni's eyes darted to the rearview mirror, then she changed lanes and allowed it to pass. "Terrorism?" Lemy asked.

She nodded. "Umhm. That. Lenis don't like jumping out of tall places and falling to their deaths. They like staying alive and not going boom on the ground."

Lemy snickered. His aunt was a card.

After that, they drove in silence for a while, the outlying suburbs of Detroit blending together in a gray, conformist sprawl. Lemy anxious gazed out the window and spotted a dozen McDonald's, a dozen Sheetz, and a dozen strip malls anchored by grocery stores both high end and low. His stomach twinged when he saw a sign proclaiming ROYAL WOODS 5. "Who's all at the house?" he asked, hoping it wasn't everyone. The fewer, the better.

Leni hummed. "Uhhh, well, Lori is there. Leia. Lizy. She works at nighttime now so she's probably asleep. I think that's it. Everyone else is at work." She swung into the opposite lane and passed a slow moving pick-up. "Oh, the kids are there, too."

Oh. Leia and Lizy were among the last two people he wanted to see right now. Lizy outright hated him and Leia...he and Leia had a lot of history and when they were together, things had a way of being volatile. Imagine dropping a single Mentos candy into a two liter of Coca-Cola: That was their relationship. There were times he loved her, times he hated her, times just looking at her haughty little face and listening to the vapid shit that came out of her mouth made him want to strangle her, and times when he needed her like a fish needs water. They lost their virginity to each other when he was fourteen and she eleven; they slept in the same bed for years, first at home, then at the trailer; even when he started seeing Lizy and Lupa too, he always went back to Leia at the end of the day, and he was content to. They fought like cats and dogs (she was a control freak...bad) then had wall-shattering make up sex that lasted for hours and kept the neighbors (and their families) awake long into the night. When Dad kicked him out and he lived in a succession of motel rooms, friends' garages, and even in the park for a time, Leia would go between refusing to speak to him and sneaking out to meet him, sometimes with money, sometimes with just herself.

During the past two years, far from the source of his problems, he was able to think clearly, or at least as clearly as a drunk fuck up like him could, and he reached the conclusion that he loved Leia, that she was the only woman he ever had loved.

He just couldn't be with her; he couldn't deal with being bossed around like a slave, couldn't deal with his thoughts and opinions not amounting to shit in her eyes. She had this pathological need to be in charge, to do things her way come hell or high water, everyone and everything - including logic, common sense, and good advice - be damned. Lemy envisioned a marriage or even a common law union as a partnership. Leia did not: She saw it as a dictatorship with herself on the throne. He thought it had something to do with her mother; Lola was very fussy and involved. Lemy wouldn't say she was overprotected, she didn't necessarily coddle Leia, but she was the kind of woman who thought her daughter was an angel and never did anything wrong. She also inserted herself into Leia's life wherever she could, buying her clothes without asking if she liked them first (sometimes she did, most times she didn't), fighting her battles for her whether Leia asked or not, that sort of thing. He always suspected that Leia felt stifled and was secretly afraid of it happening again, so she established dominance in all of her interpersonal relationships before the other person could.

Lemy wasn't interested in dominating anyone, but he also wasn't interested in being dominated.

Whatever, Leia wasn't important and neither was Lizy; his kids were what mattered. He pictured them in his head, Luya with white hair like her mother and grandfather, Meagan with her big glasses, and Lucas...try as he might, he couldn't come up with an image of his son. He was six now. Did he look like he did when he was four, or did he change? Two years isn't a long time when you're an adult, but when you're a child, it's like night and day. In two years, Lemy went from puny and thin to tall and thin (with facial hair). At thirteen he was 5'6 and had a boyish face; at fifteen he was 6'1 with slightly less boyish features. Like the old Bob Seger song, he was a little too tall and could have used a few pounds. He didn't think Lucas would have changed much, but not knowing what his own son looked like depressed him. At the very least he could say it wasn't his fault: It was Lizy's. As soon as he left, he ceased to exist to her; she cut him off like a hangnail and wouldn't even send him pictures. The few he did get came from Mom and those stopped when she left Dad.

They were in town now, quaint brick storefronts flanking tree-lined sidewalks. People walked unhurriedly through the park fronting the county courthouse. Nothing changed while he was away, not that he expected it to have; things rarely did in a town like this. They were closed rooms, stagnant, stifling, gathering dust and staying the same year after year after year. Familiar claustrophobia clutched his chest and he turned away, sparing a sidelong glance at Leni. She saw him in her periphery and smiled. "I made chocolate chip cookies last night. I gave some to Lucas and Meagan, but I saved a few for you." The last seven words came out in a conspiratorial whisper, and she winked.

Eating was the last thing on his mind. "Sounds good," he said. "I missed your cookies." The former statement may have been something of a lie, but the latter was not. Leni was the best baker he'd ever known; Lydia, her daughter, came in a close second. Growing up, they were always in the kitchen making cookies or cakes or candies, the warm smell of banana bread, muffins, and cinnamon perpetually lingering in the air, even when the oven was dark. Every once in a while, back in New York, he'd go into the bread section a grocery store, and the scent would be close, but not as sweet, not as comforting.

Leni pulled onto Franklin Avenue, and Lemy took a deep, calming breath. His stomach turned inside out and his heart palpitated sickly against his ribs, but he was genuinely excited to see his kids.

The house appeared on the left, looking just as it had his entire life: Grimy white siding streaked brown with dirt and green with algae, loose shingles, overgrown front lawn littered with riding toys, only instead of pink they were blue now. He spotted a bike with training wheels leaning against the oak tree flanking the cracked, flagstone walk, and couldn't remember if he bought it or if someone else did. Probably someone else - his last two years in Royal Woods, he had no money, barely any work, and passed his time in a perpetual stupor. Seeing his childhood home now, like a phantom rising mistily from a grave, he felt a twinge of loss in his heart that moved down to his stomach. His childhood wasn't the best, but it sure beat the fuck out of his adulthood.

Swinging into the driveway, Leni parked behind Lori's blue 2053 Chevy Volt station wagon and killed the engine; it ticked as it began to cool. "Here we are," Leni said arily.

"Yeah," he said, "here we are."

Neither of them moved, and she looked at him strangely, her head tilting to one side. "Aren't you going to get out?"

He was. He just...needed a few more seconds. "Uh, drivers first."

She blinked. "Oh, right. I forgot." She took the keys out of the ignition, shoved them into her purse, then unbuckled her seatbelt and got out.

Alright, Lemy thought, it was time to be a man and face his mistakes; he couldn't cower out here like a fucking bitch, he had to go in there and own up to what he did, even if it meant his kids looked at him like he was a piece of shit, even if it meant they wanted nothing to do with him.

He opened the door and got out, slamming it behind him. The day was sunny when they left the city, but during the ride it grew windy and overcast, and now the sky churned a dark shade of gray that threatened rain. Leni crossed the lawn and went up the porch steps, her hands up and dangling limply in front of her. Lemy trudged behind, gaze downcast and hands in his pockets, the back of his neck prickling with the sensation of being watched. He glanced around, but didn't see anyone.

Leni waited by the door, looking at him over her shoulder with a smile. "Everyone's gonna totes be excited. I know I am." She reached up and pinched his cheek.

Wincing, he pulled back and she giggled, then opened the door and went in. Lemy hesitated, then crossed the threshold.

"Everyone! Lemy's home!" Leni sang out, and Lemy felt like an escaping convict caught in the burning beam of a tower searchlight. He darted his eyes to the couch and saw a strange girl with black hair watching TV, her feet kicked up on the coffee table and her arms crossed sullenly over her chest. Must be a friend of -

She turned and holy shit, it was Luya. What happened to her hair? Did she dye it? And if so, why did she leave a Bride of Frankenstein streak in the front?

Her brow lowered ever so slightly, and one corner of her mouth turned up in a sneer of distaste that stabbed like an icepick in the guts. Her dark eyes, so much like her mother's, simmered with contempt, and with a heavy, put-upon sigh, she turned back to the TV.

Something told him she would resent him, and he had no one to blame but himself.

He looked toward the kitchen as Meagan came tentatively out, clad in a white dress with a blue splatter pattern that made it look like a tissue a Smurf blew his nose on. She wore big glasses and her sandy blonde hair in a jaunty ponytail. A head poked around the frame, and Lemy felt a rush of relief when he saw that his son hadn't undergone dramatic changes in his absence. His face was a little thinner and not as babyish, but largely unchanged. His big, brown eyes muddled as if with confusion, and he cast a questioning look at Meagan.

"Hi, kids!" Leni said and waved, drawing their attention. "Your dad's here. See?" She stepped aside and stood on her tippy toes to pat Lemy's shoulder. His and Meagan's eyes met, and he tried to take heart in the fact that she looked just as nervous as he felt, but couldn't. She wasn't to blame for this, but he was. She glanced at Lucas, gestured with her head, then came over, her little brother falling in behind her, literally walking in her footsteps, his little legs stretching to match her longer stride. He wore dark blue jean shorts and a faded red T-shirt with a yellow stripe across the front, and he aimed his eyes firmly at his feet to keep from tripping. A wan smile spread across Lemy's lips; the last time he saw his little boy, he could barely talk, now, from what Leia said, he was in school and doing well except for being too damn hyper.

Meagan came up and stood stiff as a board, her hands behind her back like a soldier presenting herself to the general. Her mouth was a straight line, but twitched into a genuine smile that lit up her whole face. "Hi," she said.

Lucas stood next to her, copying her posture but looking at her instead of his father.

Love so intense it stung flooded his chest, and tears welled in his eyes - tears of joy, sadness, or something in-between he couldn't say.

Going with his instincts, he dropped to one knee, coming level with her soft hazel eyes. "Hi," he said. He didn't know what to do next, so he just held out his arms; she hugged him, her tense body thawing when he squeezed her tight. He'd taken a thousand different drugs in his life, experienced rushes high and low and the warm, roaring good cheer that comes with a happy drunk, but none of those things even came close to hugging his daughter after two years. It might be cliche to say that he felt fuzzy inside, but he actually did, as though his chest were stuffed with cotton fresh from the dryer.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him as he rubbed his hand up and down her back. He felt more tears but choked them back and kissed her cheek. "I missed you," he said earnestly.

"I missed you too," she said.

He released her and turned to Lucas, who looked like he was trying to process what was happening. "Hey, buddy," Lemy said and clapped him on the arm, then: "Remember me?"

Lucas, head hitherto down, looked up and studied Lemy's face closely, his brows scrunching with the effort of his concentration. He favored him more than Lizy, but Lemy could clearly see his mother in him. He pursed his lips and moved them from side to side, thinking, thinking, thinking. Lemy's smile faltered and the warmth from hugging Meagan began to dissipate. Finally, Lucas said, "Kind of. You're my dad, right?"

Those words stung, but Lemy had his bearings enough to keep rolling. "Yeah," he said, "I'm your dad. It's been a while. How's it going?"

Lucas shrugged. "Okay. You?"

His nonchalance amused Lemy. "I'm doing good," he said, then lifted his arm. "I'd be a lot better if you gave me a hug."

"Okay," Lucas said, and allowed Lemy to take him in his arms. For a moment he just stood there, arms at his sides, then he hugged Lemy back. Lemy did not see his son looking at Meagan for guidance, did not see her wave her hands and mouth hug. Luya did, though, and she blew an angry puff of breath through her nose. A very, very, very small, withered, part of her, like a flickering ember in a bed of ashes, wanted to hug him too. Why should she go to him, though? He was the one who left them like they were garbage, left her like she was garbage, if he was sorry he could come to her.

And even then she probably wouldn't forgive him.

When he broke the hug and got to his feet, he looked at her, their eyes locking. Her heartbeat sped up and she tried to sneer but couldn't, so she turned to the TV instead. Did she look needy? She hoped to fuck she didn't because she wasn't. She'd gone two years without a father around, and it's not like he was around very much before he moved; she didn't need a fucking Daddy, especially one like him. Really, how could she respect herself if she went up there, hugged him, told him how much she missed him...then watched him walk out again? She couldn't, because she'd be dumb and undeserving of respect.

You know what? Fuck him. She wasn't gonna go crawling over there like Meagan and Lucas, and she sure as fuck wasn't going to give her father the satisfaction of forgiving him just so he could fuck off into the sunset again laughing to himself. What a dumb bitch that girl was. She thought I actually meant it when I hugged her. Pfft.

If Luya was one thing, it was proud, and she would rather fucking die than have him laugh at her over his shoulder as he walked away.

She didn't think she could handle it. Her mom hated her, Dad thinking she was a stupid, gullible kid who'd fall for his I missed yous would be the fucking last nail in the fucking coffin.

A flash of movement filled her phiperhery, and she tensed; he sat, the sofa dipping under his weight, and rested his forearms on his knees, his head bowing in false contrition. "Hey," he said and glanced at her.

"Hey," she said without turning. He filled the side of her vision and she moved her head slightly to the right to block him out.

He drew a deep breath. "I know you're probably mad at me -"

"No," she said quickly.

" - and that's okay. I deserve it."

Okay, huh? Glad I have your permission, "dad". She glowered at the screen, her arms crossing even tighter. Walking out the way he did and leaving them behind proved that he was selfish two years ago, and that it's okay shit proved that he was still selfish today.

"...sorry. If you don't want anything to do with me, okay. I just...hope we can spend time together."

She wanted to tell him she didn't want anything to do with him, to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone, but she found that she couldn't, and that terrified her. She opened her mouth, to say what she didn't know, and out came a flat, indifferent, "Sure."

Dad nodded his head and stared at her for a moment. "Can I have a hug?"

Luya stiffened. No. You can deal with the Devil, but it's not official until you sign your name...or give him a hug. "My show's on," she said.

He darted his eyes to his feet and gave a jerky, self-conscious nod. "Alright. M-Maybe later."

She couldn't stop her reply and almost kind of regretted it once it was out. "Maybe."

An awkward moment passed, then Meagan and Lucas were in front of him, Lucas proudly holding out a piece of paper and Meagan grinning like the cat who got the canary. Luya could understand Lucas being excited, he was just a dumb kid, but Meagan was supposed to be smart. Then again, there's a big difference between knowing big words from reading little fairy tales and having common sense. She was a dweeb and a dork and a fucking geek, but Luya still didn't want to see her get hurt, didn't want her to feel the same pain that she did the first time, to wonder if it was something she did that drove him away. She might deserve an Indian burn or a wicked noogie, but she didn't deserve to think it was her fault Dad left, that she was unlovable or something. No one deserved that.

Dad took the picture and looked from it to Lucas. "I made this for Meagan," he said, "she really likes pirate shits."

Meagan's eyes widened in alarm and Dad snickered. "Ships," Meagan said, "pirate ships."

He turned to her in confusion. "That's what I said."

"No, you said sh - another word."

Dad snorted. "Yeah, man, you said a real bad word."

Hm. Like he had any room to be a moral arbitrator; he used that word and worse when he used to argue with Mom. In fact, he was the only person she'd ever heard use cunt. She read it on 4chan all the time, but no one in her life ever said it out loud.

Hypocrite.

"Wow, this is really good," Dad said of the drawing, impressed. "You really did this?"

Lucas's head bobbed up and down. "Yep. I like drawing."

"When he can sit still enough to actually do it," Meagan put in. "He's really hyper."

Dad snorted. "I heard. You play any sports?"

If he's anything like his father, I'm sure he plays a lot of things. Like people. Luya took a deep breath through her nose and let it out slowly. She was getting madder and madder as she thought, and she couldn't stop feeding the flames, because if she did and the fire died, she might do something she would bitterly regret later on. She spared her father a contemptuous sidelong glance, scanning him up and down, desperately searching for things to hate. His eyes were red, and when she sniffed the air, she caught the pungent odor of booze. Fucking drunk. What kind of man, what kind of person, can't make it through their day without getting trashed? Oh, boo hoo life is hard. Yeah, it is, deal with it. And if you're too weak to deal with it, go die in a corner and leave everyone else alone.

And his hair...it was dirty and matted. When's the last time he bathed? Okay, we get it, you're a drunken piece of shit who doesn't care about his kids, but take a shower every once in a while.

A sudden, inexplicable memory flashed across her mind: Coming out of her room one morning when she was seven to find her mother sitting on the couch, her face buried in her hands and sobbing. Luya's heart skipped a beat and she went to her; she didn't like seeing her mother cry and she wanted to make her feel better. What's wrong? she asked.

Mom's head whipped whipped, and Luya stumbled back at the burning hatred in her eyes. Your father robbed me. That's when she noticed a bare spot where the TV should have been, and that the steroero was missing from the bank of shelves against the flanking wall. Your piece of shit father did this, Mom spat. Luya's cheeks burned and she felt like she did something wrong, even though she didn't.

Your father.

Your.

You.

He was the reason Mom had always been so cold to her. He was the reason she, Luya, stayed out as late as she could, then came home and went right to her room, he was the reason tension hung like a black cloud in that cheap, stupid fucking trailer. Him.

And what kind of father was he anyway? He rarely ever came to see her after Mom kicked him out. He, Leia, and Meagan lived in a trailer two streets over for almost two years, and she saw the moon turn blue more times than she saw him. The one time she went over there herself, she climbed the back porch steps, proud and excited because she finally brought her grade in math up to a B- from a C-, and knocked; she clearly heard his voice from inside, but Leia said he wasn't there. She knew he was, but she pretended that she didn't, and as she walked away, her head hung, she felt two inches tall. Her mother didn't want to talk to her half the time, and neither did her father now. If one person doesn't want to hang out with you, maybe it's them, if two people don't, maybe it's you.

Now she was really mad. She uncrossed her arms, shot to her feet, and walked out with a huff. She'd go hang out in the backyard or something; anywhere was better than in the same room with that asshole.

Lemy watched her go with a frown, his gaze going ashamedly to the spot she just vacated. Should he go after her? Give her space? When he was her age, he wanted to be alone when he was mad, but he wasn't Luya, he was Lemy. He didn't know what to do; he hadn't seen her in two years, and before that he saw her only infrequently, not enough to really know who she was.

Regret sharp as the blade of a knife cut through his center and he sighed. He fucked up with all the kids, but he fucked up with Luya especially. When he and Lupa went sour, he kind of turned his back on Luya. He had a line of reasoning, but it was wrong and so screwed up that right now, sitting in the living room with his son on one side and his daughter on the other, both prattling, her always open and him just beginning to open, he saw that so vividly it might as well have been literally in front of his face like a movie.

He started to get up, to go to her whether she wanted him to or not, but Leni's singsong voice stopped him. "Look who I have!"

He twisted around just as Leni reached the bottom of the stairs, dragging someone behind her like an excited girl tugging her mother along on Christmas morning. Meagan looked over her shoulder and preened "Hi, Mom."

Leia, in tight blue jeans and a pink blouse with a square neck and short, frilly sleeves, stood woodenly on the bottom tread, her thick blonde hair rippling down her shoulders like rivers of gold. Her clear blue eyes fleetingly met his gaze, then flicked away, her pink lips pursing as though she were blowing him a kiss. She looked annoyed, and when Leni held her hand up, reminiscent of a ref declaring one boxer triumphant over another, she shot the older woman a dirty look.

"It's Leia," Leni stated.

Lemy's heart knocked against his chest and even though he wanted to look away, to hide himself from her like Cain hiding himself from God, he couldn't. Despite everything between them, all the fights, all the name calling, all the tears, all the times he wanted to slap her across the face and strangle her...she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and knowing even what he knew now, she still took his breath away.

Every good memory he had of her crashed over him like a wave, blotting out the bad; the taste of her mouth when they kissed in the light of the morning sun, neither fully awake but both yearning for the other; the sensation of her fingers weaving through his; the warm, tantalizing smell of her hair, the look of soul-stirring rapture on her face when he made love to her, her sighs rising until she was panting his name and trying but failing to keep quiet because Meagan was asleep in the bassinet next to the bed; and simply holding her in his arms late, late at night, their noses touching and their bodies tangled, her heart beating against his and his heart beating against hers.

Sometimes when he was trying to fall asleep, he would think back to the feeling of her body flush with his, the shape of her in his arms, and he would ache for her, literally ache. Now, staring at her mouth agape like a Bible character meeting an angel from the sky, he realized just how much he missed her.

Looking well to the right of him as if trying to see him from the corner of her right eye, she flashed a strained smile. "Hi," she said simply.

He lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave and let it drop back to his lap. "Hey," he said.

Lucas spun, got to his knees, and laid his hands on the back of the sofa, his brow pinching. "This is my dad?"

"That's your dad," Leia confirmed with a nod.

The little boy gave a final shrug of assent, turned, and dropped onto his butt with a bounce. Lemy's eyes were glued to Leia, his kids forgotten. She threaded her fingers nervously through her hair and combed, her gaze still not directly meeting his. "How was the trip?" she asked.

"It was good," Lemy said and rubbed the back of his neck.

For a moment, he and Leia both looked at the ground, then Leni's voice roused them; grnning up the stairs, she waved. "Hi, Liz!" She held her hands out to Lemy with a flourish. "It's Lemy."

Lemy winced. He already knew what to expect.

"That son of a bitch is here?" Lizy's voice came back.

Leni's face fell and Leia blushed, her hand covering the sly simper playing at the corner of her lips. She was radiant when she smiled, even if it was a shy, embarrassed, or mean-spirited...especially when it was shy, embarrassed, or mean-spirited. When they were kids, she'd make fun of his dick until he was trembling with rage, her eyes glinting with mocking light, her mouth turned sharply up, her hands on her hips. Even though it pissed him off, it turned him on more than anything else ever had. You think you're big, but you're not. I get it better at school. I don't have to fake it there, but I do with you. He always wound up throwing her onto the bed and fucking her as hard as he could just to prove to himself that he was good, and even though he learned real quick that that was exactly what she wanted, he still let it get to him. No one in the world could cut him as deeply as she could, not even Dad.

"Yeah," she said now, "and he heard you."

"I don't give a fuck," Lizy spat. "Tell him to keep his son out of my room. I'm trying to sleep."

Leia finally looked him in the eye, her wicked little grin sending pangs rippling through his entire body. "Keep your son out of Lizy's room. She's trying to sleep."

He recalled the soft, warm texture of her hips in his hands and salty-sweet taste of her skin on his lips, her fingers running through his hair, her nails lightly grazing his scalp and sending shivers down his spine. His dick stirred, and in that moment, he wanted her worse than he ever had before.

"I will," he said and smiled slyly.

"Good," she said, her eyes twinkling. The air between them crackled with electricity and Lemy could see she wanted him too.

Lucas tugged at his jacket. "Dad?"

Lemy waved him off. "In a second," he said absently, never breaking eye contact with Leia. He had to choose his next words carefully; if he came on too strong, she might be put off. He looked up her up and down for something to compliment. She was a shallow woman, and all you have to do with those is tell them they're pretty. "I like what you did with your hair," he said.

She laughed. "Thanks," she said and ran it through one hand. "I wanted to try something new."

"It looks good," he said. The hook was baited, and, satisfied with himself, he turned to Lucas. Give them a little taste and leave them wanting more. That's the trick. "What's up, buddy?" He was aware of Leia in his phiprery, a fuzzy, indistinct blur of yellow and pink. Leni brushed behind her and went upstairs, but Leia lingered for a moment before drifting off, her hand trailing the bannister. He couldn't be sure, but he thought she was checking him out as she went.

Ha.

When he realized Lucas was looking up at him with questioning eyes, he shook his head, a blush of guilt creeping across the back of his neck. Two years away from his kids and here he was, so captivated by Leia that he was fucking ignoring them.

The passion he felt sparking to life in his loins turned cold, and he frowned at himself. "What was that?" he asked.

"I said do you want to play pirate sword fight with me and Meagan?"

Pirate sword fight? Why did that sound like a gay porn movie? An image of two gruff, hairy buccaneers holding their cocks and slapping them together shot through his mind, and he cringed a little. He glanced at Meagan, who nodded and widened her smile, the milky afternoon light reflecting off the lenses of her glasses like quicksilver. "Sure," he shrugged. Playing with his kids sounded like a blast.

"Cool," Lucas said and jumped up. "Me and Meagan vs you."

"Two on one?" Lemy asked playfully and stood. "How is that fair?"

Meagan got to her feet and smoothed the front of her dress, then looked up at him. "Because you're bigger and stronger than us."

"Oh, I'm not that strong," he demurred.

They looked at each other for a second...then Lemy grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the floor. She let out a shocked squeal and kicked her legs, the tips of her shoes battering Lemy's knees. Lucas jumped back and watched warily, his shoulders squared and his fists balled. This dad guy seemed okay, but if he hurt Meagan, he was gonna punch him in the balls.

Lemy hooked his arm under his daughter's butt and hefted her up like a giant baby. She giggled and held onto her glasses to keep them from falling off her face. "Actually, I am," he teased. He spun toward the kitchen, and she cried out in a mixture of delight and alarm, her ponytail whipping and one hand shooting out to grasp his jacket.

"Be careful! These are my last glasses!"

Oh? "Well, we don't wanna break 'em, do we?" Lemy asked and grinned. Before she could stop him, he plucked them from her face and shoved them onto his own.

The world was a hazy blur, worse than during even his worst drunk. "I can't see shit," he said and stumbled, bumping into Lucas and nearly losing his balance.

"Neither can I!" Meagan cried. "Give them back!"

Lemy slipped them off and returned them to their rightful spot...crooked. Combined with the strands of hair that came free from her ponytail in the struggle and hung in her face, they made her look like daddy's little alcoholic. "There," he proclaimed, "good as new." He glanced down at Lucas; the little boy looked like he was coiled and ready to strike at the slightest provocation. What was his problem?

Actually, Lemy knew exactly was his problem was. "Hold onto your glasses," he intoned over his shoulder, "cuz we're taking on another passenger." Lucas's brow pinched, then his eyes widened in shock when Lemy stooped, wrapped his free arm around his midsection, and yanked him off the floor too. His tiny body went rigid...then his face darkened; he slapped his hands against Lemy's chest and pushed away, his back arching against Lemy's forearm.

"Let me go!"

"Not until we reach our destination, bud," Lemy said. He scooped his arm under Lucas's butt and held him the way he held Meagan, then started toward the kitchen. Lucas continued to thrash and squirm in an attempt to escape, and Lemy staggered when his son's foot struck the side of his leg.

Meagan leaned forward to see around Lemy's face and gave her brother a withering look. "Stop," she said, "you're gonna make him drop us."

Lucas huffed and puffed, kicking Lemy and pushing his palm against the side of his face. "That's the point," he said through his teeth.

"Don't! You already broke one glasses today, you don't need to make it two."

They were in the kitchen now, the backdoor ahead, hidden beyond the refrigerator. Lemy wanted to stop and take a moment to admire his son's spirit and tenacity, but Meagan was right; Lucas was starting to slip, and he'd get free if they didn't hurry. He rounded the fridge and came to the door; past the window, the yard was deep green and drifted with brown leaves. Luya sat with her back against the gnarled trunk of a barren tree with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms crossed. She probably wasn't going to like them coming out, and for a moment he hesitated, then forged ahead anyway.

Or tried to; both of his hands were currently engaged holding his kids, and the doorknob wasn't going to turn itself. "Can you get that, honey?" he asked Meagan and leaned forward. Lucas was still now, his face screwed up in an unhappy pout of defeat.

"Yep," she chirped. She stretched out her arm, grabbed the handle, and twisted, a gust of cold air pushing the door open and kicking in a rush of leaves.

"Uh-oh," Meagan said, "auntie Lori's not gonna be happy about that."

Lori was the closest thing Dad had to a traditional wife (ha, traditional!), and as such she was the resident bitch-on-wheels / Betty Crocker housefrau. She wore a pink apron around her waist and carried a wooden spoon like a general with his riding crop. He never actually saw her hit anyone with it, but she sure as fuck threatened to. You smell like cigarettes, Lemy, she'd say when he got home as a kid, then cross her arms and stare down at him like a bug. Go to your room. Joke's on you, bitch, that's where my other pack is. She walked an endless beat, looking for dust, dirt, and messes to bitch about, and if she caught you doing something wrong, you were in for the finger wagging of a lifetime. Once she caught Lupa trying to sneak out her bedroom window, and went to this forced momesque tirade filled with young ladys and other sitcom buzzwords that sounded fine on TV but lame and stupid in real life.

No, he figured, she wouldn't like it.

Too bad.

He made sure to crunch them under his feet, breaking them into smaller pieces. "What auntie Lori doesn't know won't hurt her," he grinned.

Outside, Luya looked up, saw them, and threw her head back in a kill-me-now gesture that wounded Lemy. His first instinct was to feel annoyed and offended, but he deserved this, so he bore down and took it. He sat Meagan down first, then Lucas, then looked from one to the other. "Alright, how do we play this game?"

"We get swords and beat each other up," Meagan said with an enthusiastic smile, her hands unconsciously lifting and balling to fists.

"Sounds painful," Lemy said. "What do you guys use for swords?"

Meagan turned to Lucas, but he was already kneeling in the soft dirt next to the porch, reaching into the shadows beneath and rummaging around. Lemy looked at his daughter and lifted his brows. From what little he'd seen, she and Lucas were a well-oiled machine. "You got him trained, huh?" he asked and nudged her shoulder with his elbow.

Grinning, she clasped her hands behind her back and twisted from side-to-side. "Yep," she said proudly. "I also taught him to read and write." She frowned and stopped moving. "Well...I helped. It was mainly his teacher, but I had a little to do with it." She held the thumb and index finger of her right hand a hair's breadth apart.

"Just that much?" Lemy asked.

She nodded. "Maybe a little more. Or maybe a little less. It was a team effort at any rate."

Lemy snickered; he'd forgotten how cute she could be. When she was younger and had just discovered the joys of reading, she insisted on reading him and Leia a bedtime story every night. He thought it was the most adorable shit ever, but Leia wasn't a fan. A little girl shouldn't have her nose buried in a book all the time, she told him in that snotty tone of hers. She needs to be pretty and popular and look just like me and Lola. She didn't actually say that last part, but he knew damn well that's what she wanted of Meagan. She talked about having her go out for cheerleading when she was younger, but everyone, even her mother, told her it was a bad idea, and for once she actually listened and backed off. She knew damn well that Meagan's asthma precluded shit like that, she just wanted her daughter to be like her, as every mother does. He couldn't begrudge her that. He could begrudge her the way she was sometimes chilly toward Meagan, like she was a fucking disappointment or something.

It was never anything big, just more a...a vibe he got, and it used to bother the hell out of him, and hurt too. Was his daughter not "good" enough for her?

Now he was remembering the bad times with Leia, and the momentary lust in the living room was forgotten. Lucas pulled out a foam pirate sword, tossed it aside, then grabbed two more and got to his feet. He picked them up, came over, and handed Meagan a purple one. "This one's mine," she told Lemy.

Lucas held a red one out to Lemy and kept a blue for himself. "That's the guest sword," Meagan explained as Lemy took it and looked it over. "I cheat sometimes and use it to dual wield."

"She loves cheating," Lucas said sullenly.

"Hey, pirates are bad guys."

Lemy threw a look at Luya: She stared gloomily into the yard, a brown leaf stuck in her hair and fluttering against the rising wind. He didn't want to prod her and piss her off even more, but he didn't want to just leave her there, either. "Hey," he called, and she favored him with a nasty sidelong glance. Ignoring it, he continued, holding the sword up and forcing a warm smile. "Wanna play?"

She bared her teeth and turned away, dashing Lemy's admittedly small hopes. Lucas and Meagan looked at each other. "She doesn't like this game," Meagan said in hushed tones, "she's too old and cool for it."

"She's a lame-o," Lucas said and knitted his brows at his oldest sister.

Lemy's head told him to quit while he was ahead, but he his heart told him to keep going until she was laughing, smiling, and whacking someone with a sword.

That gave him an idea.

"You can beat the shit of me," he sang and shook the sword.

She flicked her eyes to the side and seemed to think for a moment. She opened her mouth, paused, then said, "Tempting, but no."

Goddamn it. She had a lot of pent-up aggression toward him, and he was almost certain offering her the opportunity to get it out would get her. "I won't fight back," he said, hating the pleading edge in his voice. "I'll even let you hit me in the nads."

Sighing, she got to her feet, and hope burst in Lemy's chest...only to drain away when she crossed the yard, went up the porch steps, and disappeared into the house. He slumped his shoulders and hung his head. She was going to be a tough nut to crack. He had no one to blame but himself, though...and probably her mother. God knows what kind of dumb shit Lupa told her over the years.

Did she tell her the...big thing?

He looked up at the house as though he could see through the walls and into Luya's mind beyond, but couldn't; his aunt Lucy claimed to be a psychic (which she totally fucking wasn't), but that gene must skip a generation. He doubted Lupa told her because if she did, Luya would have said something already.

A frown touched his lips and he wondered if he should tell her.

It'd probably only make her feel worse, though.

He was still thinking when something smacked the back of his leg with a soft pfft. He turned, and Meagan grinned smugly at him. "That was a warning shot."

Lemy smiled. "Yeah?" he asked.

"Umhm," she said, "I would never go in for the kill on a novice who wasn't even looking."

Lucas whipped his head in her direction. "That's a lie. You kill me in the back all the time."

"You're not a novice," she pointed out, "we've been sparring for years. Dad's callow."

Lemy tilted his head. He had a pretty good command of the English language, but he didn't think he'd ever heard that one before. "What's callow mean?" he asked, feeling like an idiot and hoping she mispronounced another word, like callous.

Taking evident delight in stumping her old man, Meagan said, "It means wet-behind-the-ears."

Okay, Lemy knew what -

"In other words, you're a total noob."

A shocked laugh escaped Lemy's throat. He knew that word all too well; every time he posted in 4chan as a kid, he was called that and worse. "I'm a noob huh?"

Meagan nodded slowly. "Noob."

He smirked. "Take off your glasses, cuz I'm gonna make you eat those words."

She lowered her brow and stared at him intently, then slipped her glasses off. "Challenge accepted," she said. She brushed past him, started toward the porch, and promptly tripped over her feet with a breathless umph. Lemy and Lucas both winced.

"It's okay," she said quickly, "I didn't break my glasses."


	6. Threads

For a long time before getting in the shower, Leia stood before the mirror over the sink and stared at her reflection; her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders and hung in her face, and her exotic eyes were pooled with anxious murk. She was naked, her body firm and toned from thrice weekly visits to Curves with Mom, her pert breasts full and her hips just wide enough to suggest the purpose of her sex. Her toes and French tipped fingernails were pained translucent pink, and her pouty lips glimmered in the light like sun struck silver. She resembled an exquisite Grecian sculpture, and she knew it. Her body was a work of art - women wanted it and men wanted to have it. The hungry stares she drew from the latter and the envious scowls from the former pleased her, and she never missed a chance to accentuate her natural, ahem, assets. When she went out, her hair and makeup done and her body clad in the finest, most expensive clothes she could afford, she felt like a goddess.

Right now, though, she felt something else.

Shame.

And need.

She tried to meet her own gaze, to impose her will and assert control, but she found that she could not, and that both scared and angered her. She knew this would happen the moment Dad told her Lemy was coming home, but she told herself she wouldn't let it. She was strong, her will was indomable, she was in charge...of everything, including her heart and body.

Then she saw him and she knew that it was all an illusion. She was not sovereign, she was not independent - Lemy held sway over her just as he had when she was twenty, and when she was fifteen, and when she was eleven. No man made her feel the things he did; she tried her damnedest to find one who did, but none of them came close.

Because none of them were Lemy. She couldn't explain the fire he woke in her though she had been trying for over a decade. He was attractive enough, but she'd been with handsomer; he was fun and witty, but she fucked better; he wasn't buff, his dick wasn't huge (nor was it small either), and he never had money to buy her nice things like some of her other boyfriends...yet the mere mention of his name was enough to set her heart racing, and his simple presence stirred her loins like a brass poker prodding a bed of embers. The sound of his voice made her weak in the knees, his face made her stomach flutter, and his hands caressing her bare skin, running over her tender breasts and down her hips, always brought her dangerously close to the edge. No man other than Lemy could make her cum in less than ten minutes - sometimes all it took was one or two good thrusts from him, just as long as he touched and kissed her in all the right places first.

She gave up trying to account for it long ago; he drew her like a magnet, and that was all she could say for certain. It started, as near as she could recall, when she was eleven, her mind and body both beginning that strange and awkward journey into womanhood; she'd always felt a special kind of affection for her only brother, but steeped in hormones, its character changed, her desire to be around him sharpening, her love for teasing him turning into love for a different kind of teasing. Coming out of the bathroom in just a towel and parading in front of him; wearing nothing but her pink underwear and a white T-shirt with no bra underneath, and finding every excuse to be near him, next to, touching him, brushing her budding breasts against him.

Oh, and it worked wonderfully. His cute blushes and stammering voice when she did these things and more were like catnip, and she couldn't stay away. Some nights, she slipped into bed with him because Lemy, I had a nightmare, I need you, and he would hold her in his arms, his warmth, scent, and touch soothing her even as burning passion consumed her. She loved those nights, and the way he would "accidentally" touch her breast, steal whiffs of her hair, and try to wiggle away when she "innocently" rubbed her butt against his crotch. He didn't want her to feel his erection because he thought she wouldn't like it, and he was right, she didn't; she loved it.

In fact, it was a night like that when he really touched her for the first time. It was storming out, and Leia was oh so scared of the thunder and lightning, so she had to bunk with her big brother for protection. It was warm under the blankets, and he gave up trying to scoot away from her; she followed wherever he went. Le-emy, come back. His bulge pressed into the back of her thigh and her heart slammed a throbbing tempo in her chest. They were both in only their underwear, and she could feel his shape, his thickness, his dizzying heat; she had to bite her bottom lip and summon every ounce of self-control she had not to reach behind her, slip her hand into his boxers, and explore him with her fingers.

At one point, he laid one shaky hand on the swell of her hip, and the scrape of his flesh against hers made her gasp. "Sorry," he said and started to take it away.

"No," she said quickly, barely able to hear the sound of her own voice over the beating of her heart. She couldn't take it anymore - she thought she was teasing him, but she was actually teasing herself. "I like it. Y-You can touch me again. If you want."

He hesitated, then splayed his fingers on her leg, the tips curling into her soft flesh and shooting sparks into her aching center. Thunder crashed and lighting filled the night, giving him enough cover to move his hand across her thigh. When he stopped, she drew a shuddery breath. "That feels really good," she said, "keep going."

That was all the encouragement he needed. He kept going, alright, rubbing her leg and hips, then placing trembling kisses on the back of her neck, then kneading her breasts through her shirt, his hips rocking and his bulge grinding in the dip between her butt cheeks. She broke, turned in his arms, and fused their lips; she jammed her tongue hungrily into his mouth and cupped his rigid member in her hand...he kissed he back and slid his fingers under the waistband of her panties, between her legs, into her quivering folds. Kissing and stroking each other with white hot ferocity, they came together in a flash of lightning like a bad omen, and from that point forward, neither looked back.

Remembering the warm, tingling sensation that bubbled up inside of her after that first orgasm with her brother, starting in her toes and flooding her like carbonated fizz, she sighed nostalgically and looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were a rosy shade of pink and her eyes were muddled with lust; her chest rapidly expanded and contracted and her core pooled with wet fire that nothing would be able to dispel.

Nothing except for Lemy.

She sighed and bunched her lips to one side. She didn't want this to happen, but at the same time she did. What's that saying about having your cake and eating it too? She wasn't sure that applied to this situation, but it sounded like it did. For the past two years, she wavered between missing Lemy with an aching loss that was keen enough to almost make her double over, and hoping she never saw his stubborn, selfish ass face ever again. There was a photo album crammed with pictures of them from the time they were kids to just before Lemy left, and sometimes, especially after drinking too much wine, she took it out and paged through it, a strange mixture of love and hate twisting through her like a two tone snake. If the love was stronger, she laid it on the pillow next to her and fell asleep with her hand resting on the cover as though it were him; it the hate won out, the threw it across the room and hoped it dropped into a wormhole where she would never have to see it again.

Presently, she studied her conflicted eyes in the looking glass and forced herself to remember the bad times they had. Lemy was bullheaded, pure and simple. He didn't like structure and he didn't like being told what to do or how to do it; he thought she was bossy for telling him what to do...well, someone has to be the boss, and it couldn't be him with the way he drank. She knew she could be just a little difficult and high maintenance, but she liked things done a certain way, to a certain standard, in a certain amount of time. Was that really so much to ask? He needed someone to be his boss because when he didn't have that, he'd regress to a drunken, emaciated mess swarming with flies and looking like the world's most pathetic wino. Did he think that was easy for her to see? Did he think she liked coming home from work to find him face down on the bathroom floor in a puddle of his own vomit? Did he think she actually enjoyed having to mother him like he was a child?

She didn't, and right now, as those memories flooded her, she leaned heavily toward ignore him until he goes away. It wouldn't be easy, but the right thing rarely is. She turned her head slowly from side to side, a strand of gold falling across her cheek and tickling the corner of her mouth.

I like what you did with your hair.

A stupid smile ran across her lips and she bowed her head. Such a simple compliment, generic even...why did it make her feel so good?

It had something to do with the way he looked at her, she thought as she crossed to the tub and turned the hot water on; it fell from the faucet in a hissing rush, and she added cold, thrusting her hand under the flow to check the temperature. When his eyes fell upon her, she could clearly see the lust and appreciation...she felt beautiful and wanted...felt as though she were the only woman in the world.

Other men looked at her like that, but she didn't give a shit about other men.

She loved Lemy and no one else.

When the water was just right, she climbed in, closed the curtain, and pulled the diverter up; water sprayed from the showerhead and sluiced down her taut body. She wetted her hair, squeezed a measure of shampoo into her palm, and massaged it into her scalp as the water beat down on her breasts, her nipples hardening. If she closed her eyes and concentrated really hard, she could almost imagine Lemy was holding them, rolling her nipples under his thumbs and pressing them flat against her chest, sending ripples of desire through her pussy. She brushed her teeth across her bottom lip and purred in the back of her throat.

Fuck it, she wanted him. They might mix as well as oil and water, but she didn't care; he might bring her low but he also took her higher than anything else she'd ever known, and that was worth it, right?

In that moment, her center slick with arousal and her body ripe for the picking, it certainly was; he could sleep in her bed and it would be just like old times...could he still go three times in one night?

Only one way to find out, she thought.

She was very turned on now, so turned on that she doubted she'd last very long at all even with no foreplay. She cut the spray, dried off, and got out, wrapping the towel around her body and grabbing her clothes from the floor. He really liked it when she wore dresses, so she'd wear one of those, but which? Her closet was brimming with possibilities. Something short, of course, to show off her legs, and tight so that the fabric clung to her body like a second skin; the thought of him seeing her every dip, ridge, and curve like a naughty suggestion made her stomach crinkle. Dresses are easy to slip off; she could do it for him or let him do it himself...

At the door, she paused, a revelation striking her like a bullet to the head.

She was making a huge mistake; she was letting herself get thoughtlessly carried away on a tide of passion like a common gutter slut and throwing every shred of logic and rationale out the window. Lemy was no good for her, and she was no good for him. The only thing they could create together was chaos.

The things he made her feel were not worth going back to the way things were before - she wasn't happy, and for a long time after he left, she hated his fucking guts. There were times, and she hated herself for that, that she could hardly look at her own daughter because she reminded her of him.

She was an unstoppable force and he an immovable object - nothing good could come from their meeting.

Intense and bitter disappointment filled her chest, and she sighed. If she was smart, she'd stay away.

Now she was conflicted again.

She'd have to think on it. To jump into the fire or not not jump into the fire. Kind of strange to have to think about whether or not to do something like that, but even though she put on a tough facade, she was weak when it came to her brother.

She opened the door, and started at the sight of Lizy, disheveled and bleary-eyed; her shoulder length blonde hair was matted, strands sticking out here and there, and dark bags hung under her eyes. She wore black sweatpants and an oversized red and blue plaid shirt creased and wrinkled.

Leia frowned. "What are you doing up?"

Her shift at the truck stop didn't start until eleven, and she usually slept between noon and seven. If Lucas let her, that is. Leia swore sometimes that boy had ADHD or something; he was always so hyper and fidgety, and his favorite pastime, aside from playing dumb pirate games with Meagan, was annoying the shit out of his mother.

"I can't sleep knowing that prick's here," Lizy grumbled.

When she first got with Lemy, Leia was under the impression that she would be his only, then he started fucking with Lupa. Since their father had his own harem of women, Leia accepted it, but she didn't like it. When Lupa got pregnant with Luya, she broke up with him in a fit of jealousy, which hurt him deeply (good). One day, while she was at the mall with Mom, she later learned, he came over to the house looking for her, but found Lizy instead. He broke down or something and she did her best to comfort him...which lead to sex. Leia didn't know details and didn't want to, but during the year and a half she and Lemy were broken up (save for the occasional one night stand), he and Lizy got fairly serious.

Something he didn't tell her when she took him back after Lupa kicked him out the first time. In fact, she didn't find out until she was already pregnant with Meagan.

So dumped his ass again, and for most of the pregnancy, he bounced between Lizy and Lupa like a headband wearing ping pong ball. She finally swallowed her pride in the third trimester and took him back. Lizy was fine when it was just her and Lupa, but not with the addition of Leia. See, Lupa lived on her own while Leia and Lizy both still lived at home, which meant that Lemy couldn't really be with one without being with the other. He was like catnip, and Leia was the playful kitten who couldn't stay away, even if he was cuddling their little sister on the couch or laying in bed with her.

Lizy was the same way, though, and while she could dish it out, she couldn't take it, and one day they got into a huge fight. Long story short, Leia knocked one of the younger girl's teeth out and Lizy, in turn, gave Leia the biggest, ugliest, nastiest black eye in history.

Their relationship only began to recover after Dad kicked Lemy out when Lucas was two; Lizy struggled to care for him on her own and even though Leia was still sore at the little bitch, she felt bad for her.

Of everyone in the family, Lizy took Lemy leaving the hardest. She never said, but Leia suspected she thought she and Lemy were going to have some kind of fairytale romance and play house with their baby while Leia and Lupa took their kids and fucked off. Unfortunately for her, it didn't happen that way, and she hated Lemy for it. Or maybe she hated him for something else. Who knew? Either way, she did hate him, or at least pretended to. "Cut him some slack, will you?" Leia asked, a defensive edge creeping into her voice. She had her moments of hating Lemy too, but it was kind of a it's okay when I do it thing.

"Fuck him," Lizy said, "he got us all pregnant and ran away like a bitch. He can suck it." She brushed roughly past Leia, and Leia shrugged. What are you gonna do?

In her room, a large space with pink walls and dominated by a four poster bed with a canopy, she went to the vanity and sat, her elbows propped on the edge and her face resting in her upturned palms. Her reflection stared back at her, its eyes brooding, lips arranged in a downward pouting frown. Why is it that the best things in life are often never good for you? Chocolate, alcohol, Lemy - it was as though God was playing a cruel and merciless joke on humanity.

Why couldn't she forget the son of a bitch? Why was she so attracted to him?

Why did she love him?

A sharp burst of childish giggling drew her attention to the window. She got up, crossed to it, and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward to see through the pane. The yard stood empty, then Lemy ran by, one of Meagan's foam swords in his hand. Lucas and Meagan chased after, both laughing hysterically. Lemy threw a glance over his shoulder and beamed at his kids, his face glowing with a warm, lovely radiance that stopped Leia's heart and made her smile despite herself.

Lucas darted ahead of Meagan and drew his sword back, but Lemy shot out his arms, scooped the little boy up, and spun him so that his head pointed at the ground. Lucas laughed and kicked his legs while Meagan caught up and started whacking Lemy across the back with her sword.

Deep inside Leia's depths, something stirred, and she let out a dreamy sigh, her chin landing in her hand. Lemy was a lot of things...and one of them was a good father.

Watching him play with his children, she made up her mind.

She did want him.

Consequences be damned.

***

Lincoln Loud passed most of the afternoon at the jobsite watching Lana, Charlie, and Chris finishing the final wall of the house, Lana on the staging taking measurements and calling them down to Chris, who cut siding panels on the table saw accordingly, and Charlie running the gutter machine from the back of a trailer. The machine was so simple to use that even Lincoln could operate it: You wound a coil of metal around a spindle, flipped a switch, and out came a custom, seamless gutter like a dollar from a slot. You had to punch a spout hole and add bracket clamps, but that was easy too. In fact, gutters were the only part of the job Lincoln had ever actively participated in, and today he did it again; he stood on one ladder while Charlie stood on another thirty feet across, holding the gutter in place while Charlie drilled the clamps in.

It was cold and windy, especially in the foothills, and by three, it began to drizzle; within an hour, it was a steady, drenching rain that normally would have sent the crew home, but they were so close to being done that Lana refused to call it a day. There was one half-wall left, and the job would be finished. Any other day, Lincoln would have pulled rank on her and ordered the guys to wrap up, but they needed the final payment; they accepted pay from the customer in increments, the first being before the job was even started and the last after it was completed. Since this one took longer than it should have (thanks to Chris and, to a lesser extent, Charlie), they were behind and needed money.

Chris and Charlie disassembled the brake and the saw table, then put them in the bed of Charlie's Dodge and covered them with a tarp to keep them from getting wet; poor little Chris has to cut the last dozen panels with snips, which is a pain the ass...but he deserved it, so Lincoln felt no sympathy for him.

Charlie broke down what he could and cleaned up, and Lincoln let him go around five. Lana nailed the last panel in at 5:10, and that was that. They'd have to come back and take down the staging (or rather, Chris and Charlie would), but that could wait until morning.

In the truck, Lana took her cap off and tossed it into the back - her hair was dry, but everything else was soaked, her T-shirt clinging to her breasts and stomach and her jeans dark with dampness. Lincoln was sopping too, and not particularly happy about it. "Sometimes I wish I opened a hardware store instead," she mused as she started the engine.

"Sometimes I do too," Lincoln said. She drove around the house in a U then started down the hill, the wipers scraping a clunking rhythm against the windshield. "Less work."

Lana turned right onto the highway. "I know, that's why I chose this."

Neither one spoke for a while after that. When Lana finally did, her tone was sober and flat. "Is Lemy at the house?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said. Leni texted him around 2:30. Gott lemee and hes hear. Those words dropped into Lincoln's stomach like a stone into a mill pond, and ever since, vague, maglinent dread nestled in his chest, seething and growing as cancer. He was worried about how Lemy would act, and how Lola and Lana would act, how Leia would act, and, most of all, how he would act. "Please don't start anything with him," he said beseechingly.

Lana stared into the rain, her face hard. "I won't," she replied solemnly, "I just don't want you to do something stupid like let him move back in."

Lincoln's heart skipped. He was thinking of doing exactly that. Raising nine kids, some of them hard to handle like Lemy and Lupa, his heart hardened, but he still loved his children; yes, even Lemy. He wanted the boy to straighten up and get his life on track, wanted it more than anything else in the world, but he wouldn't allow himself to hope, couldn't. People can change, of course, but some of them just are what they are, and he feared that Lemy was what he was, check and mate.

Turning one of his kids away wouldn't be easy, but in this case, it might be right.

He chafed when Lana gave him a suspicious sidelong glance. "Don't tell me you're thinking about letting him back, Lincoln." Her tone was firm, commanding, and from it, Lincoln knew that there would be a fight if he said that he was.

"He's my son, Lana," he said without turning. "I'm not going to abandon him if he wants to change. If he chooses his current path, that's on him, but if he chooses to change, I'm going to support him."

They came to a rolling stop at a red light. The rain began to slacken, and the wipers slowed. He was aware of Lana openly glaring at him, but ignored her. His mind was made up and there was no changing it; he was unshakable and his will steadfast, a trait developed over the years by first having ten sisters, then ten wives. In a situation such as that, outnumbered and surrounded, you either man up or you die. Lincoln Loud manned up.

The light turned green and Lana turned back to the road, pushing the gas and guiding the truck through the intersection. "He's not going to change, Linc, you know that," Lana said.

"Maybe he will, maybe he won't. We'll see."

"He's a drunk and a deadbeat. Those don't change."

Anger squeezed Lincoln's chest and he took a deep breath through his nose. He knew what Lemy was, but that didn't mean he liked hearing it out loud, especially from someone who didn't give a rat's ass about him. After Lemy left, Lizy developed a nasty hatred of him, and Lana, being the overprotective mama she was, caught it as well. Lola didn't like him, Leia was back and forth like a schizophrenic, and everyone else was largely indifferent save for Leni - he'd been given chance after chance and fucked them up every time, what else could you feel after a while but numb? Lizy and Lana were the only ones who outright hated him, and if Lincoln dwelled on it too long, it pissed him off. Lizy, okay, he could understand her stance, but Lana?

"We'll see," he said.

Lana snorted. "Yeah, we'll see when he-"

Lincoln leaned over and turned the radio on as high as it would go to drown her out. Classic county with a steady backbeat blared from the speakers.

Lana shot him a withering look, her eyes half-lidding and her lips twisting hatefully. Lincoln didn't look at her, but did his best to communicate with his body language that her opinion on this matter didn't mean shit to him.

She turned away and didn't speak to him again, the atmosphere in the cab dark and oppressive. When they pulled into the driveway, she cut the engine, ripped the keys out of the ignition, and got out, slamming the door behind her. She stalked across the yard and went inside, slamming that door too. Lincoln watched her go, then slipped out himself. He went around the front end and crossed the lawn, the wet, overgrown grass caressing the cuffs of his pants. He looked up at he house as he approached; it seemed darker somehow, ominous, like a haunted derelict on a backwoods road, its door a wide, grinning mouth and its eyes evil, twinkling eyes.

He chided himself for being so dramatic, and went up the steps. It was only his son...only a man who made mistakes…

...mistakes that hurt his entire family, especially his children. Especially Luya.

With a deep, steadying breath, Lincoln opened the door and went in.

***

"This is favorite movie of all time," Meagan said happily. She sat next to Lemy, his arm around her shoulders and her hands in her lap, her feet dangling inches off the floor. Lucas sat on Lemy's other side, wedged between him and the arm.

Onscreen, Jack Sparrow did battle with a zombie or something on the deck of a pirate ship, their swords hitting with a crisp metallic clink. "I like Magic Island better," Lucas said.

Meagan rolled her eyes. "That's not a real pirate movie, though."

Lucas whipped his head around and leaned forward to see past Lemy. "It has pirates," he said in a tone that settled the matter.

"Yeah, but they weren't real. It was a fantasy world."

"Nu-uh."

Meagan nodded. "Yeah-huh."

Lucas opened his mouth to retort, but Lemy cut him off. "Come on, guys, I wanna see the movie." He laid his hand on Lucas's head and ruffled his brown hair. "We can watch Magic Island next."

The little boy shrugged. "Okay. Then you'll see it is a real pirate movie."

Meagan stuck her tongue out, and Lemy snorted. These two were a trip - they were each other's best friend and each other's worst enemy: One minute they were metaphorically hugging and kissing, and the next they were bickering like an old married couple.

He suddenly found himself wondering if maybe, when they got older…

That thought disturbed him, so he shoved it away.

For a long time they watched the movie in silence, rapture and wonderment on Meagan's face and curious interest on Lucas's. The drunk from the bus was completely gone, and the cold fingers of clear-headed consciousness began to creep in like a damp chill when the fire dies. When he was sober, the knowledge that he was a piece of scum insistently clawed at his mind, and right now, it was stronger, more incessant, than ever. Here he was, at his parents' house, where he was universally hated, and playing Daddy to two kids he didn't really know while a third he absolutely didn't sulked somewhere in the shadows. He had no job, no place to live...he was so focused on getting here and dealing with meeting his family again that he didn't take the time to consider the fact that he was homeless and had virtually no money. Everything he touched failed, he hurt the people closest to him again and again, and he wanted a drink so bad he was beginning to shake.

The half bottle of Canadian Mist in his jacket pocket sang sweetly out to him, and he turned his head. The coat hung from the back of a chair in the dining room, and he imagined he could see the outline of the bottle within. He licked his dry lips and concentrated on the movie. He loved his daughter and all, but pirates? Pirates suck. Playing pirate was fun, but sitting in front of a TV and watching Johnny Depp fag his way through 150 minutes of lameness was mind-numbingly boring.

"This is my favorite part," Meagan said excitedly. "Watch. It's really cool."

Lemy patted her arm. "I'm watching."

He glanced at the jacket. So close, yet so far away. He scraped his teeth across his bottom lip and wished he was drunk. He'd enjoy himself so much more if he was.

Meagan cheered. "Pretty cool, huh?" she asked. Lemy turned, and she looked up at him with a frown. "Were you watching?"

"I sure was," Lemy lied, hoping she wouldn't ask him any questions about it that he wouldn't be able to answer, "it was cool."

She stared at him uncertainly, then smiled. He saw something in her eyes that scared him and made him feel like a monster.

Trust.

She trusted him and he didn't know what to do. No one trusted him, and, he suspected, no one ever had. Not Leia, not Lupa, not Lizy or Dad or anyone else. Suddenly, he felt the weight of the world bearing down on his shoulders, and he was going to buckle.

"Magic Island's better," Lucas said.

Wrought with nerves and trembling, Lemy looked away from his daughter with a rush of shame and stared at the screen, only glancing up when the door opened and Lana came in. Her shoulders were bunched and her fists balled at her sides, and with a pang of dread, Lemy knew in an instant that it had to do with him. She slammed the door and went straight up the stairs without sparing him so much as a single look.

He figured she'd hate his guts for leaving; hell, she hated him before. One time, she took him aside and straight out told him that Lizy was too good for him. She called him an alcoholic and a piece of shit as she did it, and that hurt...what hurt even more is that deep down, somewhere in his heart, he knew she was right.

A minute later, the door opened again and Dad came in, wearing a tan Members Only jacket over a white button up. Lemy's first instinct was to turn away and will himself invisible, but Meagan chose that moment to pipe up. "Hi, grandpa!"

Dad looked over, and for a fleeting instant, they made eye contact, then both broke it simultaneously. "Hey, honey," he said and shrugged out of his coat, hanging it from the rack. He came over, and Lemy tensed a little. Dad ruffled Lucas's hair, passed behind Lemy, and leaned over the back of the couch to kiss Meagan's cheek. "Watching this one again?"

She nodded proudly. "I'm showing it to Dad."

Lemy pretended to brush his fingers through his hair, in actuality he was shielding his face.

"Hi, Lemy," Dad said.

Damn it. Lemy was halfway hoping the old man would ignore him.

Putting on a strained smile, he glanced at his father. "Hey, Dad."

"I showed him how to play pirate deathmatch too," she said.

Dad chuckled and looked her. "Who won?"

"Lucas and I. Dad's not very good."

For some reason Lemy couldn't name, that statement plunged into his chest like the wickedly sharp point of a dagger. Dad's not very good. She meant at the game...she was teasing him...but even so, he was hurt.

Dad laughing made it worse.

"You two are professionals," he said.

"I know," Meagan preened.

Dad patted her head and stood to his full height; Lemy stared awkwardly at the screen, his father a looming and vaguely threatening black mass in his periphery. "How was the trip?" Dad's voice was stiff and guarded.

"Good," Lemy said simply. "It, uh, it took longer than it should have. I got in a little late."

"Buses for you," Dad said. "I need to get changed."

With that, he went upstairs, and Lemy breathed a sigh of relief. His father inspired many different feelings in him, and since leaving and this talk of adoption came up, inferiority was the strongest. Giving Dad legal custody of his children was the final step in achieving total slimeballhood. It was also the biggest and most spectacular way to admit that his father was a better man than he.

Then again, didn't walking out in the first place prove that? While he was struggling hand-to-mouth in the city, Dad was here financially supporting Meagan, Lucas, and Luya, paying their medical bills, buying their food, letting Lucas and Meagan live under his roof...tucking them in at night and cuddling them and…

Lemy let that thought trail off - he was starting to get angry, and if he got angry, he didn't know what would happen. Drunk, he did, but sober...sober was always a surprise. He could pop off and punch a hole in the wall, or he could break down crying. It was like a Wonder Ball - you never knew what was inside until it cracked open.

It was his fault and his fault alone. He could have held on, but he chose to let go. After Dad kicked him out and he lost his job, he lived in motels rooms, a homeless shelter in Elk Park, and even in town square for a little while, sleeping on a bench at night under a blanket of newspapers. He wasn't allowed at the house, Lupa took pity on him and let him sleep on her couch for one night when it was snowing out, and Leia was the only one who had anything to do with him. He knew he was a fuck up, knew that they hated the things he did, but that doesn't justify throwing someone away like garbage, turning your back on your own fucking child. Him doing that to his kids was different, what other options did he have? Be a bum? He couldn't even see them anyway, Lizy refused to talk to him and wouldn't let him spend time with Lucas, and Leia only brought Meagan with her once or twice because when they got together, they always fucked, and Meagan was a little too old to do that in front of, though they did a few times.

Looking back, he could have sucked it up and done differently, but at the time he felt like an animal backed into a corner: He was sad, lonely, bitter, and full of hate. If he stayed, God only knows what might have happened.

He glanced longingly at his jacket. He really needed that drink.

He couldn't have it, though; everyone would smell it and give him those goddamn judgmental stares he came to hate so much. They were never just condemning, though - they were always tinged with something else, sometimes pity, sometimes loathing, and every once in a while, genuine sadness. Fuck that - he'd rather die than let those assholes degrade him again.

Turning to the TV, he forced himself to concentrate on the screen, realizing for the first time that Meagan was talking. "...I like superheros too. Not many superheroes, though, like Batman. He's cool. I like that he's a real person and not an alien or something. Do you have a favorite book? I really like Treasure Island, but The Three Musketeers is really good too."

Lemy rubbed his temple. Little Miss Motormouth. "I don't read very much," he said and licked his lips. Mind over matter, he told himself. He was stronger than this, he could go without booze if he wanted, he just needed to establish dominance. He took a deep breath and clamped the insides of his cheeks between his teeth.

"You should start," Meagan said, "it's never too late and reading is really cool. A lot of people say it's for nerds but it's not, it's for everyone."

"Reading is fun," he said, "I just really haven't had a chance."

"Well, now that you're here, I can read you bedtime stories like I used to. I have the perfect one for tonight, it's about a guy who turns into a pirate on every full moon."

Lemy's brows knitted in confusion. "What, like he's a werewolf?"

"Yep," Meagan said, her head bobbing up and down. "It's silly, but it's really funny. There's this one part where he's walking down the street and the transformation happens; he falls to his knees and screams, but the scream turns into a hearty pirate laugh." She giggled.

A ball of hot, throbbing pain was forming over his left eye, and his throat was so dry he could barely swallow. The tremors in his hands were worse too. Two years ago, when he first got to the city, he was picked up on a drunk in public and spent a week in jail. He'd been drinking so long by that point that within days, his booze steeped body began to atrophy and metaphorical dry rot set in. Delirium tremens, commonly known as the DTs, happens when a guy like him stops drinking suddenly - three days into his stay in jail, and he was wracked with tremors, shivering, and profuse sweating. General confusion set in on day four, and by day five, phantom bugs scurried across his entire body. He knew damn well that he wasn't going to start that shit right now, not mere hours after his last drink, but dark dread filled his stomach anyway, and restless energy coursed through his veins like acid.

And Meagan just kept on and on and on. Pirates, spaceships, cowgirls, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Ray Bradbury, some girl from school she was friends with...talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And Lucas kept fidgeting, shifting this way and that, rolling his neck, kicking his feet, Jesus, kid, sit still, will you?

He realized his mood was darkening, and cold fear crept into his chest. When he wasn't able to drink, he got grumpy. The kids were getting on his nerves and if he didn't get some good will in his gut, he'd most likely snap off at one of them.

That thought shook him.

Fuck it. Let Dad and his fuck squad look down their noses, they were a pack of assholes anyway. No matter what he did, it would never be good enough, so why try to please them? He knew his own body and mind, and he knew he needed that fucking drink like an emphysema patient needs oxygen.

Before he could go get it, though, Dad came downstairs and sat heavily next to Meagan with a weary sigh. He was in a pair of black pants and a green polo shirt that made him look like a middle class schlub.

Which is exactly what he was.

Crossing his legs like a woman, Dad draped his arm across the back of the couch and stared at the TV; credits rolled over a scene of a steely, sun-dappled ocean. "Can you and your brother give me and your Dad some privacy?" he asked Meagan. "I need to talk to him."

Aw, great.

"Okay," Meagan said and hopped off the couch.

A dark shadow ran across Lucas's face, and he narrowed his eyes. "I wanna watch Magic Island."

"We can watch it later," Meagan said, "I need your help with something." She looked pointedly at Lemy, and he got the vibe that the 'something' had to do with him.

Lucas brightened as though the idea of being helpful to his big sister excited him. "Okay." He slipped out from under Lemy's arm and got to his feet, stumbling a little. He went to Meagan, and together they rounded the couch and disappeared up the stairs, Lucas asking what she wanted him to help her with and her telling him it was a 'surprise.'

Alone with his father, Lemy sat up straighter and braced himself for whatever might come; he wasn't planning on arguing with him, but with his mood the way it was, he couldn't promise anything.

Dad gazed at the TV for a long time before glancing at him with a wistful smile. "She really likes pirates," he commented.

So they were gonna do this...beat around the bush and make small talk. Lemy hated that shit; he'd rather just get to the point and get it over with.

"Yeah," he said with a stiff nod. "Where, uh, where did that come from?"

Dad shrugged. "Who knows. Remember when you were big into bikers?"

When Lemy was nine, he thought outlaw bikers were the coolest guys ever, tearing down the highway on their hogs, living by their own rules, free to come, go, and do as they pleased. He eventually got over it, but for a while, he was obsessed; he'd pretend his bike was a Harley-Davidson and wear a denim jacket his Mom got him that had a big Hell's Angels patch on the back. "I remember," he said fondly - fondly not because of the dumb wannabe biker shit, fondly because that period of his life was the last time he could remember being truly happy and carefree.

"You used to drive me crazy with that stuff," Dad said with a snort. "You made everyone call you Lethal Lemy."

Lemy uttered a harsh laugh that turned into a hacking smoker's cough. He completely forgot about that; Lora and Lupa made fun of him for years. As lethal as a kitten, Lupa liked to say.

Shaking his head, Dad said, "It was kind of cute, though."

Lemy swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and tapped his foot against the floor. He could almost taste the whiskey, cold on his tongue, coating the back of his throat, burning on its way to his stomach. His breathing caught and he licked his lips. "So how are things?" Dad asked, bringing him back.

"They're good," Lemy lied. He wasn't too proud to piss on himself in a drunken haze, wasn't too proud to eat out of a garbage can if he had too, wasn't too proud to share a needle...but he was far, far too proud to admit to his father that he lost both his job and his apartment.

Dad nodded. "That's good. You're cleaning office buildings now, right?"

I was, Lemy thought bitterly. "Yeah, I have two buildings...that I clean every night."

"Hm. How is it? Work wise?"

Lemy thought for a minute. Even on nights that he had to do everything, including dusting, it wasn't hard, just time consuming. Rarely did he break a sweat and never once did he walk out the door stiff, in pain, or sore. "Not bad," he said, "it's pretty easy, actually."

"That's good. Make decent money?"

Obviously not or else he wouldn't have asked for some. "Depends," he said, "sometimes I work extra hours cleaning other buildings. I'm one of the best cleaners they have. In fact, my boss is training me to become a supervisor."

Dad's brows lifted incredulously, and Lemy wondered if he could see through the lie "That's good. I'm glad to hear that." He was silent for a long time, his eyes downcast. "You still drinking?"

The question came hard, like a kidney stone, and made Lemy's cheeks blush. He couldn't outright lie and say no, but he also couldn't tell the truth and say yes, more than ever. Best to choose a happy medium, or as close to a happy medium as he could get. "A little," he said, "I'm trying to quit."

"Really?" Dad asked, a hopeful hilt to his voice.

Lemy nodded. "Yeah, I-I'm sick of...sick of it."

"That's great," Dad said, "alcohol...seems like it helps, but it doesn't. It's...it's bad stuff."

Ha. Dad the dime store philosopher. He acted like he knew everything and like his fumbling attempts at playing Ward Cleaver made him father of the year.

"I know," Lemy said. "I wanna get sober. For the kids."

Dad nodded. "They'd appreciate that. They have their mothers, and they have me...but they really need their father."

Was he being sincere or was condescending? Lemy couldn't tell, but Dad had a way of patronizing you like you were an idiot.

"Yeah," Lemy said, "I wanna be there for them."

"You guys getting along?"

Lemy flashed back to the game of pirate deathmatch or whatever it was called, and an earnest smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah. We played in the backyard. Had a blast." He thought of Luya sitting under the tree, her arms crossed, and his smile faltered a little. "Luya's still...kind of distant."

"Yeah, I figured she would be," Dad said. "She's at the age where...she has an attitude about everything. She missed you, though, and if you keep trying, you'll get through."

If? Like he wasn't going to?

Man, he needed a drink.

By now, the house was abuzz with activity; Lori, in a pink apron over a blue, button up dress with short sleeves, came down and went into the kitchen; Lana went out the front door, and moments later Lola came in (like Clark Kent going into a phone booth and Superman coming out); others came and went, Lemy not sure who because he kept his eyes firmly on the TV. Where were all these people fifteen minutes ago? Or two hours?

Were they hiding?

Oh, Dad's here, it's safe to go downstairs, he'll protect us from Lemy.

That wasn't fair and he knew it, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they really were hiding from him.

"I will," he said, "I just...I don't want to push her. I know she's gotta be...you know...mad at me, and if I try too hard, she might not respond well."

Dad ticked his head from side to side. "It'll probably take some time," he said, "but it's time you should really invest in."

More patronizing. What, did Dad think he didn't know this?

"Yeah," he said and shifted. "I will."

They lapsed into silence, both staring at the screen, where the DVD menu played on an endless loop, the same fifteen seconds of dramatic music cycling over and over again. That was a good analogy for his life - a perpetual and monotonous circle from which he could not break.

From which...deep down...he might not want to break.

He thought of Meagan and Lucas. They need their father. Did they? Did they really need him? They were great kids...too great for him.

Or maybe that was an excuse to not change.

He didn't know, but he did know this:

He really, really, really needed that drink.

***

Thirty-eight...thirty-nine...forty. Leia's lips moved silently as she glided the brush through her long, blonde hair. Her reflection stared back at her, its eyes lightly shadowed and its mouth a glossy shade of pink that sparkled in the light cast by the bare bulbs lining the top of the mirror. She tried to meet her own gaze but was perturbed to find that she couldn't. She flicked her eyes instead to Meagan, who sat on the middle of Leia's bed with her legs crossed and a book open in her lap. Her chin rested in her upturned palm, and every so often she flipped a page with a crisp snapping sound. Leia watched the little girl with a faint half-smile, wondering, as she frequently did, what she was thinking. Meagan, though her daughter, was an enigma to her - a riddle that she had yet to figure out and was secretly afraid she never would. Every child, Dad said, is different, and though she'd had her problems with him just as surely as Lemy and Lupa, she believed he knew what he was talking about: He had nine of them, after all, and unless you're a complete moron, that's something you learn from. Meagan was her own person and Leia accepted that, but there were times (many more than she cared to admit) that she felt like Meagan was a stranger.

At her age, Leia was popular, well-kempt, and concerned with boys, her looks, and her cell phone. Meagan was the polar opposite: She didn't care whether her hair looked nice or not, she didn't travel in many social circles (though she wasn't a hermit, either), and she always had her nose buried in a book. Leia could not, as a rule, stand inertia - she needed external stimuli, be it music, TV, or a magazine. Meagan, on the other hand, was quite content to lay on the floor or the couch and entertain herself. My imagination is a fun place to be, she said often, and Leia never failed to cock her head in bafflement at that. She knew people like that existed...but how? How could they sit alone in a room and not go stir crazy? How can they stare at a blank document on a computer screen...then breathe life into it?

She didn't know, she just didn't, and it frankly hurt her that she and Meagan were so different. They shared very little in common, liked almost none of the same things, and had next to nothing to talk about. When they did carry a conversation, Meagan sprinkled her sentences with big words that Leia either didn't understand or never thought to use herself...which served only to annoy her. She wanted desperately to connect with the little girl...to do things together like pedicures and spa days...but Meagan just wasn't that kind of person.

Leia loved her dearly, but sometimes, she wished she wasn't her.

Turning her head, Leia brushed the other side. One...two...three…

In the mirror, Meagan beamed down at her book as though something particularly humorous was happening on the page. Her smile was warm and achingly beautiful, just like her, and sharp longing filled Leia's chest. She felt like a woman so close...yet so far away, trapped on the outside looking in, separated from her daughter by an invisible barrier.

A volatile mixture of anger and sadness flared inside of her, and she sighed. This is what happened when she let herself dwell - she picked and picked and picked, as though at a scab, until she was raw and oozing blood.

She needed to think of something else, but the only other thing on her mind was Lemy, and she probably shouldn't think of him either.

Fifteen...sixteen...seventeen…

Screw it. Whether she should or not, she wanted to. She went back to watching him play with Meagan and Lucas in the backyard, and a warm, tingling sensation bubbled up from the pit of her stomach like fizz in soda. She couldn't recall the last time she saw him smile, but it was so long ago, and her memories so strident in obscuring it, that she'd forgotten how beautiful it was. In fact, now that she thought about it, she saw a lot of it in Meagan's smile. He had his problems, but he was a good man at heart...and an amazing lover.

A smutty grin ran across her lips and she glanced instinctively down to hide the girlish blush on her cheeks. She'd also forgotten how handsome he was, with his soft brown eyes, strong, angular chin, and rugged features. As a boy, he was soft and delicate, but he grew into himself very nicely.

Her heartbeat sped up as she remembered the feeling of his big, calloused hands kneading her small, sensitive breasts, the flutter of his lips over the slope of her neck, the hungry passion in his eyes when they furiously coupled. She liked it rough...adored feeling vulnerable and at his mercy...and the best way to bring out the animal in him was by teasing. During their years together, she would either make fun of his dick size until he fucked her like he had something to prove, or tease his cock into a mindless frenzy; wearing dresses that lifted over her bare, creamy buttocks when she raised her arms, kissing him and rubbing him through his jeans...only to walk away before he could cum, letting him have only fleeting kisses and passing touches for days on end. Sometimes, she didn't relent...she watched the pressure steadily build, watched his knees knock and his eyes roll, watched with her own rising arousal as he reached the point of suffering, waiting, biding her time, getting so worked up by how badly he wanted her, needed her, that a single, swift touch in the right spot would make her cum so hard she'd scream.

Finally, when he couldn't take anymore, he'd come into her room, throw her onto the bed, and take her like a caveman. Those were the best encounters they ever shared, but also the shortest: Three deep, urgent thrusts, and both of them exploded. If Leia wasn't mistaken, it was a bout of ten second mind-blasting sex that resulted in Meagan…

She clamped her bottom lip between her teeth and squeezed her thighs together to relieve some of the pressure gathering in her center; a delighted shudder ran through her and tendrils of electricity streaked out from her core like lightning across the summer sky. Her eyes half lidded and her heart beat an unsteady rhythm against her breast, each throb pushing her sensitive nipples against the fabric of her dress, which served only to heighten her arousal. If Lemy was here, he could bend over her shoulder from behind, slip his hand between her legs, and stroke her until she dug her fingers into his forearm and grinded him in her climax.

Another shiver dropped down her spine, and she shook her head like a woman waking from a trace; heated smoke lingered in her brain and her pussy smoldered like a bed of hot coals yearning to be raked. She swallowed with an audible click, her throat dry and tacky, and flicked her eyes to Meagan's reflection: Still smiling at that dumb book and the secrets it held.

Leia didn't realize she was speaking until she heard her voice, shaky with need. "How do you like your dad?" Maybe she was seeking Meagan's approval for what she was going to do, maybe she was looking, at the last minute, for a reason to stop herself, to abandon her hopes for reconciliation with Lemy.

If the latter was the case, she did not find it. Meagan looked up from her lap, and the goofy, happy smile on her face told Leia all she needed to know. "I like him a lot," the little girl said, "he's really cool and fun."

Meagan never said that Lemy not being around was hard on her, but Leia could sense it in her, especially in the way she clung to her grandfather as a surrogate. Every girl (and boy, for that matter), needs a dad, and it did not surprise Leia that Meagan took to Lemy so quickly. Unlike Leia, she had no reservations, no misgivings, no little voice in the back of her head telling her to push him away. Leia did, but she was also in love, and love is the most powerful cloud-er of judgment known to man. A small part of her still held out, still wanted her to turn tail and run. Remember what it was like the last time?

Only her heart - and her body - didn't care about last time. Had Meagan said no...maybe she would have changed her mind...or then again, maybe she wouldn't have.

"You guys looked like you were having a good time," she said, a dreamy quality to her voice. She flashed back to them in the yard, and the warm tingle from before returned, starting in her French tipped toes and flowing upstream to her cheeks. She didn't know why seeing him interacting with his children turned her on so fucking much, but it did, not only physically but emotionally as well.

"Yeah," Meagan piped, "he's not the best at pirates, but he's a quick study." Her brow pinched. "Though I suspect he let us win."

"Maybe," Leia allowed. "He's very strong, so if he hit you as hard as he could, you'd get hurt."

Meagan shook her head. "No, I wouldn't. I can take a hit."

Leia chuckled. "Are you sure about that?"

Meagan nodded. "Umhm. I was built for rough and tumble adventure."

"You were?" Leia asked and lifted her brow.

"Yep," Meagan said. "Well...except for my bad eyesight. And my asthma. And...actually, maybe I was built for something else." The last part came as a hard confession, and Leia frowned at the quick flash of sadness in her daughter's eyes. She didn't understand Meagan's obsession with space and pirates and getting dirty while pretending to be an explorer or whatever it was she did, but she loved the little girl regardless, and seeing that flicker of hurt pinched her heart.

Setting the brush aside, she pushed away from the vanity, got to her feet, and sat on the edge of the bed. She laid her hand on Meagan's knee, and she looked up at her. "Honey, just because you have asthma and bad eyes doesn't mean you can't go on adventures."

"I know," Meagan said quickly...even though she didn't agree, at least not fully. It's just...sometimes she read about all these things in books that looked like sooo much fun, but when she tried to imagine doing them herself, she saw a dork in big glasses bent at the waist and wheezing for air. That depressed her. But it wasn't that bad. She had books and she was more than happy to live through those if she had to. After all, not everyone gets to be a cowboy or a pirate, or an astronaut, or something like that, whether they had bad eyesight and asthma or not.

Leia stroked her daughter's hair and pressed their foreheads together. "Maybe we can go on an adventure soon."

Meagan brightened. "Can Lucas come?"

"If you want him to," Leia said. His coming on an adventure was a foregone conclusion at this point: He and Meagan were inseparable, an odd couple that somehow made their sibling relationship and, indeed, their friendship work despite their differences.

Meagan started to speak, hesitated, then went ahead anyway. "What about Dad?"

"M-Maybe," Leia said because she didn't know what else to say. She wanted Lemy's touch and his kiss...but she also wanted him; his love, his support, his presence. She needed a man in her life and Meagan needed a father. If she could answer he daughter's question the way she desperately wanted to, she would say yes...he could come...on all their adventures. "If he wants to," she added.

For a moment, Meagan considered her mother's words with a thoughtful expression, then, with a wistful, child-like longing that pierced Leia's heart, she said, "I really hope he does."

Again, Leia did not know she was going to speak until she did it. "Me too," she said earnestly and rubbed Meagan's shoulder. "Me too."

And she did.

With everything she had.


	7. Collision Course

Of all the places Lemy Loud had ever been in his checkered life - holding cells, homeless shelters, park benches - none were as as uncomfortable as sitting down to dinner with his family. The atmosphere, dark and heavy, crackled with tension, and every time he gathered the witherell to look up from his plate, he caught one of his aunts hurriedly glancing away, as though they'd been watching him.

Like he was a freak.

He stared down at his food with a tight-lipped expression and took reluctant bites of his food; he wasn't hungry, but he had to keep up appearances. Just like he always did around these assholes.

Funny how quickly we slip into old roles, huh? In the span of a few hours, the past couple years melted away, and he was back to what he was before: An agitating and vaguely repellent inconvenience that his aunts simply endured. Like hepatitis.

Before Dad kicked him out of the house, they suffered him the way an impatient and put upon master suffers an annoying dog - they fed him, they watered him, and they occasionally changed the newspaper he made piddle on, but they never spoke to him, never offered affection or encouragement, no head scratches, nothing. After Dad kicked him out, however, he ceased to exist to them. Except for Leni, of course, but she's not a fucking cunt like her sisters, so Lemy barely counted her when he said The Aunts. They weren't individuals in his eyes, but rather a monolith, a single entity with a single mind but many bodies, like fingers to a hand. They were different people, but, if you asked him, they were only as different as shit was from vomit. Not the same substance maybe, but you still don't wanna step in it.

During his time wandering in the wilderness, like Adam cast from the Garden, none of them texted him, none called, none so much as fucking asked about him. He'd see one at the gas station or the grocery store, and he wouldn't even bother approaching; he was a fuck up, but he wasn't stupid - they didn't want anything to do with him. You'd expect them to offer money and help, or to at least say hi when they crossed paths at Meijer or Walmart, but you'd be wrong. They were Dad's little sycophants and if he said you weren't worthy, they clawed at his leg in a writhing mass of incest and turned their backs on you.

In the two years he spent bumming around Royal Woods and Elk Park, Lemy came to hate those bitches just as deeply as he hated Dad. Now, sitting at the dinner table surrounded by them, he was so ill-at-ease his left eyelid twitched like a tweaker outta juice. Dad's harem didn't include all of his sisters, only the ones present - Lemy saw so little of the others that he sometimes forgot that they even existed. Lynn thought Dad was a pervert and punched him in the face once (per Mom); Luan lived in California now, where she wrote jokes for second rate comedians; Lisa worked six months out of the year at the Kennedy Space Center, and Lily didn't speak to Dad or any of the harem, so no one knew what she was up to.

Lori sat directly across him, to the right of Dad, and looked like she had a stick up her ass; Lucy sat on Dad's left, her bottle black hair pulled back into a ponytail and her bangs brushing her eyebrows; Lola sat next to Lana in a posture almost identical to Lori's (stuck up bitch), and Lana glared at her plate like she was trying really hard not to say something.

I'm right here, dyke, Lemy thought, say it.

She kept her mouth closed...for now.

Taking a bite of his food, he darted his eyes surreptitiously from one aunt to the next. You know, he never got the whole harem thing. Sure, he was with Leia, Lizy, and Lupa at one point, but the trifecta didn't last very long - he was either with one, the other, or the third, only briefly all three at once. They also never lived together and tried to play happy family. First, he lived with Lupa in her trailer, then with Leia in hers, then here with Leia, then with Lupa again, here with Lizy, then...was that how it went? He tried to remember but the past was a dense, alcoholic blur, like a pixelated face on Cops. Maybe he had the order mixed up, maybe not, but either way, he was largely one on one with his women.

Not Dad. He lacked the balls to commit to one, so he stayed with them all, which made for a weird family dynamic growing up. Lori was always his best girl and, in a way, she was more of a mother to Lemy and his sisters than anyone else; hell, his own mom was more of an older sister than a parent: They drank, got high, and went places together. Concerts, bars, to jail once when they got picked up on a drunk in public. He called her Mom, but she never felt like a mom, and reflecting on that now, he couldn't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

To be fair, Lori never felt very much like a mother either. She was more like a warden or a stepmother who doesn't outright hate her new charges, but doesn't particularly like them either. Each mother had control of her own child, but only in the way a manager has control of a McDonald's: Someone was higher up and could pull rank on you at any given time. If you didn't like it, well, there's the door.

One of the things that one has to deal with in commission of having a harem, Lemy observed, is jealousy. Each sister spent the night with Dad on a rotating shift: Mom on Monday, Leni on Tuesday, etc. Even so, that wasn't enough, and when Dad was sitting in his chair or doing taxes in his office, they would fight over him in subtle, passive-aggressive ways. Lola would sit next to him and stroke his leg, only for Lori to come over and interrupt; Lana would ask him for help with something, then suddenly Mom needed his opinion on what color jacket she should order from Amazon...then she'd show him a thousand pictures just to cuck Lana from having him. Why not purple? Lana might hiss through her teeth. You always wear purple. Lola was big about intentionally making her sisters jealous, and went out of her way to do it. Shade, snark, phony smiles, and backhanded compliments were official languages in the Loud house, and none of the sisters were particularly close with one another. By virtue of being twins, Lana and Lola were once like that *crosses fingers* but after the harem stuff started, they rarely so much as looked at each other.

Like any rebellious teenage boy, Lemy decided to be as unlike his father as possible, and one of the ways he chose to present his newfound independence was by rejecting the notion of having a harem himself. He never went so far as to rule out incest (as a horny kid, the idea of being with girls was all-consuming, and given his family structure, he accepted incest as normal) - in fact, he didn't think twice about thinking of his sisters...looking at his sisters...then eventually touching his sisters. The only one he hadn't had sex with was Lyra, who now lived in California, but they came really close once, and wound up giving each other head. Her choice. She wasn't ready.

Loan lived close by, but wasn't here either. Lizy was upstairs and awake, but refused to come down, Liena sat at the foot of the table, and Leia sat next to Lori, radiant in a tight pink dress and make-up, her blonde hair curled and pulled back in an elegant, teased ponytail that reminded him of a movie star. She wore silvery earrings with teardrop ends that swayed when she moved and a silver chain around her delicate, sun-kissed throat. The dress's neckline dipped down to reveal a tasteful hint of cleavage, and when she turned her sultry eyes on him, his throat went dry and everything - alcohol, his shame, his discomfort, and even his kids, flanking him on either side and prattling incessantly - fell away, the world reducing entirely to the angel before him.

Presently, she looked up from her plate and caught him staring; the corners of her mouth turned up in a sly, satisfied smirk that made his heart blast so hard you could see its outline against his shirt like in a cartoon. She batted her eyelashes and turned demurely away, a loose strand of hair caressing the gentle line of her jaw. Lemy swallowed thickly and glanced at his food - he was flushed and shaking and couldn't fucking wait to get her alone.

Someone tugged his shirtsleeve and he turned to Meagan, who smiled proudly up at him. "Didn't you, Dad?"

Didn't I? Didn't I what? "Sure," he said as though he knew what she was talking about.

"That's very nice," Lori said curty and carved her steak into tiny, bite sized pieces, her entire focus on the task at hand so, Lemy suspected, it didn't have to be on him. He glanced around the table, and all of his aunts, looked anywhere but at him, as though catching so much as a glimpse of Lemy the Awful would taint their purity or something.

A throbbing ball of anger formed in his chest and he took a deep breath through his nose. They thought they were so much better than him, but you know what? When you got right down to it, they weren't: Lola's beauty salon was failing when he left, and if the place wasn't bankrupt already, it would be soon; Lana's business was doing the same until Dad stepped in; Lucy didn't work, but wrote "poems" that no one bought or gave a shit about; and Lori was a lazy stay-at-home housewife who never worked a day in his life. They were all fucking losers, and if it weren't for Dad holding their hands, they'd trip flat on their stupid ugly faces.

Close to seething now, he stabbed a bit of steak and shoved it into his mouth, grinding the meat between his teeth like a giant chewing the head of a Lilliputian rival. Across the table, Leia crossed her legs at the knee and brought the fork lightly to her mouth. Lemy caressed her face with his gaze, and from the faint pink blush touching her cheeks, she knew and approved.

Dad took a drink of tea and sat the glass back down with a clunk. "Did you email Farris?" he pointedly asked Lana.

Lana shook her head. "Nah, I forgot. Stuff on my mind."

That stuff was probably him, Lemy reflected, but he was too lost in worshipping Leia to care. He crept his eyes slowly up and down her body, relishing the way the thin, cottony fabric of her dress clung to the swell of her pert breasts and feminine curves. Goosebumps raced up and down her slender arms and her nipples pressed against the dress; she wasn't wearing a bra...and she was turned on. Lemy's heart bounced and his dick twitched like a bloodhound picking up the dank scent of bitch.

Dad rolled his neck longsufferingly. Lemy thought he was going to tear into Lana, but instead he uttered a breathy, "Alright."

Lana started Loud Home Improvement on her own, but had to run to Dad for help after a couple years because while she was good at hammering nails, she was shit at running a business. Not as shit as Lola, but still shit nonetheless. She fucked up invoices, forgot to make important phone calls, ignored her phone if she didn't recognize the number (real smart, Miss Businesswoman), and constantly screwed up tax work, which lead to her being audited and almost shut down by the IRS. If it wasn't for Dad, she'd be a jobless loser just like Lucy.

The table lapsed into silence, the only sounds chewing and clinking. Meagan took a drink of milk and looked around in confusion. "Why is everyone so quiet?"

Leia met Lemy's gaze and bit her lower lip. He grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

"Because we're eating," Dad said, "if we talk with our mouths full, we'll choke." He clamped his hand around his throat and stuck his tongue out, elicitig a giggle from Meagan.

Lori sat her knife down and looked up with a flourish, her eyes going to Leia and her brows lifting disapprovingly. "You look nice tonight," she said, and it was clear from her tone that she knew exactly what Leia was doing...and didn't like it.

"It is a woman's responsibility to always look her best,:" Lola put in, an arrogant infection in her voice. She dipped her fork into her mashed potatoes and took a bite. Lori hummed and went back to her dinner with a dismissive shake of the head. Let her make her mistakes, it seemed to say. She's an adult. Lemy narrowed his eyes and, not for the first time, imagined slapping her across her holier-than-thou face. Lola looked at Meagan and smiled. "Isn't that right, honey?

Looking like a doe in the headlights, Meagan nodded quickly. "Yep. Always has to look her best." She doesn't give two shits about how she looks, Lemy thought defensively. She's not a stuck-up cunt like you.

Lana rolled her eyes at her sister but didn't say anything.

"I don't have to look my best," Lucas piped. "I'm a boy."

Leia looks her best, Lemy thought as he undressed her with his eyes, slipping the straps of her dress down her silken arms, his nose skimming hers and their breaths mingling; staring into her eyes; tasting her lips and fleeting his tongue across hers, her fingers threading through his hair and his hands running over her flexing shoulder blades, down her spine, her skin soft and warm under his touch. He saw himself weave his fingers through her golden tresses and deepen the kiss, her smell steeping his brain and setting his soul on fire.

He realized with a flush that he was hard, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Leia's grin sharpened and her eye twinkled with a knowing glint. She was blushing harder now, and Lemy took a deep, reflexive breath through his nose in the vain hope of catching her scent like a dog sniffing a bitch.

"...right, Dad?" Meagan asked.

Leia slouched down a little, and Lemy could imagine her hips rolling in that hypnotic ways of hers.

"Dad?"

He looked at the little girl like a man coming out of a trance, a rush of annoyance flowing through his chest. "What?" he asked patiently.

"I said girls can have fun and stuff too, they don't have to be prim and proper all the time."

He was aware of Lola watching them with mild distaste, and Lana nodding at her grand-niece. Apparently they were having a heated discussion or something, he didn't know, didn't really care; his mind was on Leia and Leia alone. "Yeah, sure," he said shortly. Realizing how brisk he sounded, he forced a smile and stroked his daughter's hair. "Girls can do anything they want. They can be princesses or they can be construction workers. It's up to them."

Meagan beamed proudly as though his word was law, and Lola hummed haughtily. He laid his hand on his daughter's shoulder and leaned in as if to impart a great secret. "The can even be pirates."

She smiled broadly up at him. "I know," she said. But I needed to hear it from you, he could almost hear her adding. He ran his fingers affectionately through her hair and pecked her on the forehead. When he turned to Leia, he caught her watching them with a hazy smile and shimmery eyes.

"That's right," Lana said, "not every woman wants to be a plastic Barbie doll."

Lola's face darkened, then she smiled coldly. "Some would rather be lesbians."

Lana's eyes flashed like ice and her fingers curled tightly around her fork. "Some don't want to have a facelift every six months or get collagen pumped into their saggy lips."

Dad laid down his fork and sat up straight, his brow lowering sternly. "And some of them would like to finish their dinner in peace," Lori said, cutting him off.

This was exactly the kind of thing he grew up with, someone always mad at someone else, someone always being a fucking nasty bitch. He didn't miss it.

Something brushed against his leg, and he started. Leia favored him with a teasing smirk, one arm resting on the edge of the table and the other in her lap. She slipped her bare toes under the cuff of his pants and ran them up his calf. His heart slammed and his dick strained against the seam of his jeans; the warm kiss of Leia's skin left electric tendrils in its wake and sent sharp volts of desire into his center. She bit the bottom of her lip and nodded slowly. Yes. I want you. Bad.

He lifted his leg against her toes and nodded back. I want you too.

Lola got up from the table, grabbed her plate, and went into the kitchen; when she emerged, she threw a bitter glance at her daughter, and disappeared into the living room. Liena and Lucy were next, then Lana. Dad finished off his drink and looked at Lori. "When you're done, can you get the extra bedding out of the closet?"

"Yes," Lori said and stole a sidelong glance at Leia. "I'll do that now." She got to her feet, picked up her plate, and carried it into the kitchen.

Leia curled her toes against Lemy's leg and slid them down, smiling prettily at the way his breath caught. Neither noticed their father's eyes darting apprehensively between them, or the slight frown playing at the corners of his mouth. Lemy and Leia were on a collision course and nothing could stop it - he expected this, but he wished, deep down, that it wouldn't come to pass. They were no good for each other and never had been, probably never would be. Things could still be different, he cautioned himself, but dark clouds were even now gathering in his chest, obscuring the face of his sun-like hope. "There's not much room," he said now, and Lemy jerked in his direction. "You don't mind sleeping on the couch….do you?"

Something told Lincoln that Lemy would be sleeping elsewhere.

"No, the couch is fine," he said and coughed nervously. "I've slept on worse."

Lincoln looked at Leia. Her eyes said he can sleep in my bed.

He sighed and got up. "Leia, it's your night to do dishes," he said and went into the kitchen, worry beginning to gnaw at his stomach. It wasn't so bad, he figured. They were both older now; maybe they'd take their relationship a little more seriously this time. People mellow with age, like wine; they start to think differently and to see the world differently. When you're twenty, it's a party and pussy is all you can think about. Later, at thirty, sometimes sooner, you begin to think long term. You realize what a cold, scary place life can be, and your priorities shift; you don't want fun and flings anymore, you want a partner, someone you can stand against the tide of time and aging with, someone to be there for you, someone you can have a lasting love and companionship with. He had Lori for that, and he was grateful. Their love was not a roaring inferno as it was when they were young; it was a low, radiant glow, like a flickering flame in a stone hearth on a winter's night. It was dim, comfortable, and warm, providing just enough firelight to see by, so that neither ever lost their way

Suddenly, he wanted that for his son and daughter so bad it was like a dagger in his chest, the blade twisting left and right at the dread and likely prospect of them not having it.

At the trash can, he scraped his plate, then carried it over to the sink, where he sat it on top of the others. He turned when Leia came in carrying an armload of glasses, followed by Lemy, two plates stacked in each hand. He stepped aside so that Leia could set her load in the sink, then watched as she filled it with water. "I wash, you dry?" she asked Lemy.

He nodded. "Sure." There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye that Lincoln knew all too well. The tension between them was palpable, like a cloud of smoke in the air, and Lincoln could only step aside and let whatever may happen happen. He pushed away from the counter and went into the dining room, leaving them to their own devices. Meagan and Lucas stood by the table like a couple of bums on a street corner, and he smiled fondly. "You two wanna watch a movie?"

"Magic Island," Lucas said. That was one of his favorites

We can't right now," Meagan said, "we have to wait for Dad."

In the kitchen, Lemy said something and Leia laughed just a little too loud. Knowing human nature, and his children, he could confidently say that Lemy wouldn't be available to watch Magic Island with the kids. Two years he hadn't seen them...and his first night back he was too busy sniffing around Leia to spend time with them.

Lincoln's mood threatened to sour, and he forced that thought away. "Your dad's busy. How about we watch it instead? You can show it to him tomorrow."

Meagan and Lucas looked at each other, and Lucas shrugged. "I dunno about you, but I'm watching it." He turned around and went into the living room

"I guess I am too," Meagan relented, a note of disappointment in her voice. She really wanted to hang out with her father more; he was fun and nice and made her feel even better and safer than she remembered. She always kind of missed him, but it wasn't until today that she realized just how much she missed having him around.

Grandpa was cool too, though, and there was something like pleading in his eyes - he must really wanna watch Magic Island.

How could she say no to a face like that? It'd be like saying no to a puppy dog. She glanced longingly at the kitchen threshold, then to her grandfather. "Alright," she said, then held up a stern finger. "But no talking."

That was a bad habit of his - you'd be trying to concentrate and he'd start in with that blah blah blah stuff; it was enough to drive you crazy.

He raised his hand, palm out, in a solemn gesture. "I promise I won't talk."

He seemed genuine, but you can never tell. "Alright, mister," she said playfully, "but I'm watching you." She poked her glasses with her fore and middle fingers, then pointed them at him in a V.

"Watch away," he said.

Oh, she would.

And if he some much as breathed wrong, she'd keelhaul him.

Lemy wiped a plate with a dish cloth and sat it in the drying rack between a cooking sheet and a metal pan. Next to him, Leia squeezed her sponge over the water, splattering the sudsy surface with dirty droplets, then picked up a bowl and started to scrub. Lemy watched, his eyes lingering on her shapely arms, her skin like Bahamian sand and the smell of her perfume intoxicating his senses. He moved a little closer, and their hips gently bumped. She looked up at him with those limpid eyes, and the world seemed to stop...then she bumped her hip against his and laughed. "Get out of here," she said, "you're invading my personal space."

"Sorry," he said with a smirk, "I slipped."

She arched her brow, her pink lips curling slightly up in an elfin smile. "Oh, you did?"

"Yeah," he said, "I bought these shoes from a drug dealer. I don't know what he laced them with, but I've been tripping all day."

She laughed musically and looked down at the sink, her head shaking back and forth. "You're a doofus," she said.

Lemy shrugged. She was a sucker for his dumb jokes and always had been. He suspected it was less to do with them and more with him. He remembered a TV show or movie where a teenage girl explained to someone that she laughed around a cute boy not because he was funny but because he was cute. Or something. He didn't fucking know. He was that way with her, though; things that did nothing for him in any other woman turned him on to no end in her. Like the sound of her voice; it alone was enough to fill him with passion. And her feet...feet are gross and he never touched any woman's but hers. In fact he once delighted in sitting on the couch with her feet in his lap, his fingers kneading her heels and ankles, threading between her pink polished toes, brushing along the ridge of her sole.

He didn't know what it was about her, but he was addicted as surely as he was to alcohol. More so, in fact, because while he knew he could quit drinking if he really wanted to, he didn't think he could quit Leia. "What can I say?" he asked. "I spent too much time around Luan growing up."

Leia rolled her eyes. "Oh, God, don't even. I still hear her stupid puns in my sleep." She handed him the bowl and he took it, their pinkies brushing with an electric spark.

"They weren't that bad," he said and sat the bowl carelessly in the drying rack. Leia narrowed her eyes in faux suspicion, and Lemy laughed. She was really hot when she did that. "Okay, they were bad."

She hummed and turned back to the sink, picking up a fork and cleaning it slowly. "How's the city?" she asked.

It sucks, I hate it.

"Not bad," he said, "always something to do."

"Oh? Like what?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Get mugged."

She laughed again. "Yeah? Have you ever been mugged?"

"Me? Nah. The last guy who messed with me wound up in the morgue." For some reason, he thought instantly of Sean.

Leia snickered. "Okay, killer."

"Hey, it's true."

She handed him the fork, and he took it, his fingertips skimming her knuckles. She stared at him, her breathing coming quicker and her face blushing, then turned quickly away. Lemy swallowed thickly. He wanted her so bad it hurt and every passing moment it got harder and harder to stop himself from taking her.

Reaching into the water, she brought out a wooden spoon and wiped it down. For a while, neither spoke, her washing, him drying. When she finally spoke again, her tone was serious. "The kids are really happy you're here."

"I really missed them," he said honestly, "being away from them was hard."

Leia nodded. "Not having you was hard for Meagan."

He thought of how happy and carefree his daughter was, and wondered if she was always like that, or if it she was like that because he was here. "I know," he said heavily. He tried to think of something else to add, but couldn't, so instead he grabbed a stack of plates and took them to the cabinet across the kitchen. He put them away, then looked at Leia; her dress stopped well above her knees, and her back arched slightly as she bent forward to rummage through the water. He couldn't take it anymore. He went over and took her hips in his hands. She stiffened a little, then relaxed, leaning back into him, her butt rubbing against his crotch and her warm, fragrant hair caressing his nose. His dick throbbed and his heart pounded. She rested her head in the crook of his neck and turned so that their eyes met. In them, he saw the same primal need he knew she must have seen in his.

Placing a soft kiss on her cheek, he ran his hands over her stomach. She closed her eyes and undulated her body against his; reaching back, she grazed her fingers across his scalp, and he kissed her again, on the corner of the mouth this time. Their lips met, and her eyelids fluttered open. This time he saw more than need, he saw fire. She grinned, then flicked her tongue out; he met it with his and moved his hands down into the Y-shaped juncture of her thighs; warmth soaked through the fabric of her dress, dank and intense. She licked his tongue and he licked hers back, making her giggle.

"Dad?"

He pressed his lips to hers and kissed her hungrily, the taste of her mouth like sweet wine. She kissed him back, their tongues lapping and lashing as their passions rose.

"Mom?"

Lemy found the outline of her sex and cupped it in his palm, his middle finger stroking her slickening center through her dress. She gasped into his mouth and nipped his bottom lip, her hips beginning to rock. He slipped his hand under the hem and trembled at her wet heat, her bare flesh the softest silk, the juice of her arousal like boiling acid on his skin.

"Mom?"

The kiss broke and both of them whipped their heads toward the threshold, matching glowers on their faces. "Go away!" they cried in unison, and Meagan started, hurt and confusion crossing her face. She scurried off like a scolded dog, and Leia looked at Lemy. "We should go upstairs," she said and flashed a naughty smile. "So I can fuck you."

Before Lemy could reply, she weaved her fingers through his and lead him out of the kitchen, through the living room, and up the stairs. Neither one paid any attention to Lucas, Lincoln, or Meagan.

Because right now, none of them mattered.

***

Leia shoved Lemy roughly back onto the bed and jumped on him, her knees caging him and her hands pinning his shoulders. Her eyes blazed with animal lust and her teeth bared in a leering pervert smile. She leaned forward until their noses were mushed together and drew a deep breath through her nose. Lemy stared up into her eyes and stroked his hands up her flanks, his dick bursting against his jeans like a feral dog straining against a leash. She flicked her tongue out and licked his lips.

He kissed her roughly and pulled her body flush with his, his hands crawling across her ass and his nails digging into her soft flesh. She pulled away from his mouth and grinded herself against his bulge, the motion pushing the hem of her dress up until her bare sex scraped denim. Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted. Lemy lifted his hips and grinned evilly at the way she shuddered.

Gliding his hand up her back, he slipped his fingers into her hair and pulled, jerking her head back. She let out a trembling moan that turned into a husky giggle.

Lemy, bare chested and on his knees, fumbled at his belt buckle, his hands shaking and his body smoldering with desire. Leia lay back on the bed, the dress pushed up around her hips and her legs spread for him. Her scent filled his nose, wild and musky, and when he finally got the belt off, he pulled his pants down and mounted her, his hands planting on either side of her head and his head raking across her lips. She purred in the back of her throat and ran her hands over his broad back. He reached down, took his dick in his hand, and guided it to her entrance.

"Am I gonna have to fake it, or did you get better?" she asked, her nails biting into his skin.

He rested his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes. She gave him a bratty smirk...then gasped when he thrusted, his dick sinking into her bubbling depths, filling her and slamming against the opening of her cervix. She dragged her nails down his back, breaking skin, and Lemy moaned in a mixture of pleasure and pain. He buried his face in the side of her neck, took her flesh between his teeth, and bit, making her muscles clamp around him. "Oh, fuck," she cried.

Leia wrapped her legs around Lemy's waist and threw her hips into each one of his frenzied thrusts, a sharp "Oh, fuck," tearing from her lips every time he pounded her cervix. She clawed his back and he tugged at her hair, ripping strands loose from her ponytail and bringing tears to her eyes. He pulled back slowly, then rammed forward, back, then forward, pausing to take in her red, sweaty face. Her chest rose and fell with the hammering tide of her heart and her walls squeezed down on his shaft as it pulsed out, making both of them pant

"You still fuck like a virgin," she teased as she stroked his cheek.

Flashing, Lemy grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the bed, then the other. Even after all these years, pushing his buttons was pathetically easy. "You're all bark," she taunted, "and no bite."

He pulled back, then shot forward; stars burst across her vision and she let out a wavering ahhhhahh.

"What was that?" he asked smugly.

She braced her heels against his butt, lifted her head off the bed, and kissed him. He had the upper hand and he knew it, but there was one thing that always got him really going, and she saved it for when she wanted to be extra sore the next day. Pulling away from his lips, she looked him dead in the eye as she said, "Meagan's not even yours."

Lemy's face darkened.

"And unlike you...her father could get me off."

Lemy twisted Leia's right arm and pressed it into the small of her back, slammed into her, and grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling back like a rider on the reigns of a horse. She screamed and clutched the blanket in her hands, her knees shaking. He drew his hips back, her walls moulding to the ridges and contours of his dick, then surged forward again. She hissed and mewled like a cat in heat being rutted by a one-eyed tom, the sound of her moaning pushing Lemy close to the edge of orgasm.

Letting go of her hair, he shoved her face into the mattress, and she lifted her ass like a good bitch. He jerked her arm up between her shoulder blades as he thrusted; she let out a throat ripping howl and pushed back against him. She turned her head to the side and sucked great gulps of air. "I fucked all your friends," she said. "You're raising another man's daughter."

With a sneer, he pushed her arm higher and she moaned. "Your cum doesn't work. None of the kids belong to you."

He slammed forward, his teeth baring. She knew that pissed him off, and even though he was almost 100 percent certain she was full of shit, he couldn't help letting it get to him.

Establishing a steady pace, he rutted deep into her, his balls slapping a rhythmic tempo against her clit. "Oh, God, yes," she said and pushed back against him again. "Don't stop...don't stop...I'm gonna cum."

Lemy bowed his head and went faster, part of him wanting to knock her into bliss and another part wanting to hurt her.

He threw himself forward, she threw herself back, and when he felt his climax beginning to rush up, he balled his fist and smashed it into her side as hard as he could. She let out a breathless umph and tightened; he expanded and filled her, long ribbons of burning lead shooting deep into her thirsty womb. She cursed through her teeth and started to shake, her own end exploding in her like a hydrogen bomb. Lemy let go of her hand, gripped her hips, and thrusted one final time, ramming his seed as far as he could get it. His cum didn't work, pfft, we'll see about that.

When it was over, he rolled over and lay next to her; she remained on her knees, her face buried in the mattress and her arms in an upside down V. Lemy fought to catch his breath, and turned to look at her just as she turned to look at him; messy, tangled blonde hair in her eyes and sweat coated her forehead. Her cheeks were a roaring red, and her body shuddered as aftershocks ripped through her.

"I really fucking missed that," she grinned.

Lemy nodded. "Me too," he said.

She tossed her hair out of her face and Lemy rolled onto his side, his hand caressing her cheek. She was always beautiful, but never more so than after a rough fucking. "You can sleep in here tonight," she said, a suggestive hilt to her voice. "And tomorrow, we can have morning sex." A salacious smile spread across her lips.

"Okay," he said simply, "works for me."


	8. Castles in the Sand

Meagan Loud came awake in a spill of early morning sunshine like a cat, her body stretching and a big yawn escaping her lips. She rolled over, sat up, and scratched the back of her head before she was fully conscious, and had to stop herself from getting to her feet; sometimes she got up but wasn't ready to be up, which lead to spills, pratfalls, and tumbles. She wasn't clumsy - at least she didn't think she was - she just...fell. Not a lot, though, just a little. In one of the books she read, a character got really drunk (like Dad used to), and the writer said something about the room spinning and the floor tossing like the deck of a ship at sea - that's how she usually was in the morning. She knew the Sandman came by at some point and sprinkled sand in her eyes, but was there also a Beerman who crept through the window and made her drunk?

That was a joke, she didn't believe in the Sandman. She didn't even believe in Santa Claus, not at lot, at any rate. He made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but she really, really liked the thought of him being real, so she kind of hung on even though her fingers were slipping and had been for a long time.

When she trusted herself to not topple over, she got up, slipped on her glasses, made extra sure she was steady, then crossed to the door. She used to try and walk when she was sleep-drunk because it was like getting her sea legs, but, and this is pretty embarrassing, she didn't have sealegs. She had regular old normal landperson legs. Last summer, Lori and Grandpa took her and Lucas to Lake Michigan for a weekend, and they were out on a charter boat: Meagan was all excited...until she boarded and got violently seasick. She spent the whole time puking over the rail while Grandpa held her hair and Lori patted her back. First time's always the hardest, Grandpa said. Uh, yeah, I'll say! Since then, the idea of going out on the water didn't set entirely well with her, but whatever. She didn't really wanna be a pirate, it was just fun think about. She wouldn't want to be a spacewoman either, come to think of it. One teensy, tiny little problem and you're trapped in the vacuum of space forever, floating farther and farther away from earth as the pressure builds then POP, your head explodes.

No, thank you. Fantasy and reading is one thing, but she'd poop herself if she actually went to space.

The hall stood empty and alone, like a country road at midnight, all the doors tightly shut and shadows filling the air. Her eyes went to her mother's door, and she wondered again if her father was in there since he sure wasn't on the couch when she sneaked down at midnight. She really wanted to hang out with him, and also, kind of to, well, make sure he wasn't mad at her or anything. She was used to Mom yelling at her (though she didn't do it very often anymore), but Dad, as far as she could remember, never raised his voice in her direction, and that he did last night bothered her. Then again, he and Mom were, like, doing sex stuff, and sex makes people act funny. That's what Lucy told her - she read a book where two characters had sex and it kind of confused her. The author said something like Herschel entered her and bursts and whorls of sensation crackled through her brain. Uh...he entered her? Like...he was a demon and he possessed her? That didn't make sense so she asked Lucy, who gave her a barebones rundown.

The man, apparently, puts his thing in the woman's thing. Meagan had no idea how that worked and she didn't really want to know - it was kind of gross and embarrassing. That her parents acted like they were going to do that was encouraging, though, because doing sex with someone means you love them, and if her parents loved each other, they'd get back together. She was apprehensive about the prospect at first, but after hanging out with Dad yesterday and realizing how much she missed him, it excited her. She imagined them all living together as a happy family and it made her giddy. She'd really miss Lucas, but maybe she could talk Lizy into letting him move with them. And by talk, she meant intimidate with threats of making her walk the plank and stuff.

Probably wouldn't work, but that was a worry for another day. Right now, her main concern was her parents falling in love again.

The way they yelled at her stung, though.

She hoped they didn't do it again.

In the bathroom, she did her business and washed her hands, a light, airy tune of her own devising humming from her lips. The weatherman on the news last night said today was supposed to be warm and sunny; maybe she could talk Dad into taking her and Lucas to the park. That'd be fun.

She cut the sink, spun in a swish of blonde hair and white nightgown, and went back to her room, a happy spring in her step. In her room, she went to the closet, opened the door (she kept it closed because open closet doors are creepy) and considered her selection. Mom insisted she wear dresses so she bought them by the butt load. She had green dresses, blue dresses, pink dresses, white dresses, black dresses, enough dresses to sink a pirate ship with some left over. She had jeans and other pants, but, to be honest, she'd come to enjoy the freedom of a dress, and the breeze was nice too. Sometimes you need pants, though, especially in winter. Mom didn't mind her wearing pants in the winter. Or the summer either. It's not like she made her, just if she saw her in pants, she'd start in. Oh, you should wear that pretty dress I got you last week. It's so nice and blah blah blah. Meagan didn't understand it, but even though people said she was smart, she didn't understand a lot of things.

Brushing her fingers across the dresses, she settled for a pink one with shoulder straps and a white floral pattern. She pulled her nightgown over her head, replaced it with the dress, then went to the dresser, where she selected a pair of blue underwear and yanked them on.

There. Now she was ready for an awesome day with her Dad.

***

Tickle.

Lemy winced in his sleep and muttered something that even he himself didn't understand. His mind was at half power but he was just conscious enough to know that he wasn't fully asleep, yet not wholly awake. The soft flutter came again, like the kiss of spidery legs against his cheek, and his face crinkled. He lifted his hand to brush it away, but stopped when he felt something he didn't expect and couldn't explain. He creaked one eye open, and Leia's face filled the world, her blonde hair hanging in his face and ghosting over his features. Her eyes were muddled with both sleep and desire, and he was suddenly aware of her sickly heat breaking over his rigid dick. A wicked smile across her pink lips, and she leaned in, planting a slow, wet kiss at the corner of his mouth.

"Good morning," she said and kissed his jaw. Lemy blinked the sleep from his eyes and fluttered his hands to her bare hips; she straddled him like he was a horse, and when she rolled her hips, her satiny center scraped his head, sending his heartbeat off-kilter.

She trailed needy kisses along his jawline and to his throat, where her tongue darted out and flicked his pulse. "Good morning," he said with a lazy smile. He ran one hand up the curve of her back, starting at the cleft of her butt and ending at the nape of her neck, a long, gentle stroke. If he was a horse, she was a cat, and their union was strange, wrong...and exhilarating.

"You're really hard," she purred into his ear. She took the lobe between her teeth and clamped down, pain and arousal bursting in his skull.

He slid his fingers into her hair and kissed the dip of her throat, the salty taste of her skin like ambrosia in his mouth. "You do that to me," he said.

She giggled and licked his ear. "Do I?"

He kissed her shoulder, then bit down hard, making her jump. "You do," he grinned.

She arched her back, guided her hips to his tip, and aligned their sexes, her fingers splaying on his shoulders and her breasts quivering with the pounding of her heart. Lemy had been with two dozen women in his life, but none had tits as nice as Leia's. They were small but firm, a cute mole dotted one and her responsive nipples a soft, girlish pink. He cupped them in his hands and squeezed, his thumbs making deep circles against the swollen nubs; her eyelids fluttered and she seductively licked her lips, then slowly impaled herself on his length, her walls forming tight against his shaft and stroking wetly down, drawing him deep into her boiling core. His breath caught and he held fast to her hips, his butt lifting off the bed and touching the opening of her womb.

Leia threw her head back and issued a long, protracted sigh through parted lips, then looked down at him with a devilish simper. She lowered her face until their noses touched and her hair shrouded his face, closing them in their own secret world; her hot breath broke against his lips, and he breathed deeply, drinking it in like a fifth of Jack and getting dizzy, light-headed drunk. She tossed her head to one side, brought her pelvis flush with his, and kissed his cheek. "Can I actually cum this time?" she asked with a teasing hilt. She drew her butt back, then slid forward, taking him to her limit and sucking a sharp intake of breath.

Lemy turned his head, and their lips glanced, her pupils dilating slightly and her mouth turning up in a keen smirk. He squeezed her tit and she yelped. "Maybe," he said, "if you admit what a slut you are."

She giggled in the back of her throat, lifted up, then brought herself down again. "Hmmm...okay," she said and kissed his mouth, "I'm a slut. But you have a small dick."

He kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth and swirling with hers and his fingers tangling in her hair. She kissed him back, her hips rocking faster and her walls shlicking his tightening rod. "No I don't," he panted.

A malignant light glinted in her eye. "Yes you -" he word cut off in a cry when he thrusted up into her.

"Okay, no you don't, no you don't, no you don't," she panted, and Lemy's ego swelled.

Propping herself up on her slender arms and staring down into his eyes, she set a quick, savage pace, her eyes rolling back into her head and her breasts bouncing. Lemy held onto her hips and relished the sight of her red face twisting and contorting into beautiful expressions of rapture and bliss.

When the end came, he threw his hips against hers and unloaded with a shivering grunt, his mind rolling away on a tide of nirvana and his body shaking as it pumped into hers. She moaned, bowed her head, and rode out her own climax, her eyes squeezed closed and her jaw slack. Lemy stared up at her as she came to a halting stop and opened her eyes, a satisfied smile spreading across her lips. "I really missed that."

"Me too."

She rolled off and his took her in his arms, his nose burying in her hair - fruity with a ripe hint of sweat - and laced his hands over her stomach. She scooted closer and wiggled her butt against his deflating member, a wet, silvery streak of cum smeering across her supple skin. Neither spoke, both enjoying the warm sunshine falling through the window, and the tingling afterglow of their lovemaking. Lemy's eyelids drooped, and before long he was dozing, a feeling he hadn't known in a long time lying heavy upon him like a blanket.

Happiness.

Or at least contentment.

If only he had a drink.

He smacked his dry lips and swallowed hard. He finished the last of the Canadian Mist last night after Leia was asleep, and the grim knowledge that there was no more clutched his chest.

"Any plans for the day?" Leia asked, bringing him out of his langor.

Plans? No. This wasn't a fun vacation getaway. He was here to sign that paperwork and probably to leave again. He doubted Dad wanted him hanging around, and he was not planning on staying where he wasn't wanted.

He thought of Meagan and Lucas, and of the woman in his arms, his seed drying on the insides of her thighs, of how much he missed them. Maybe...maybe he could swallow his pride and just deal with it. He counted leaving in the first place as a mistake, so why do it again? And even if Dad and his bitch aunts didn't want him around..well, fuck them. He had as much here as he had anywhere else. More, actually. His kids were here, and so was Leia.

The girl he loved.

And, at times, the girl he hated.

She was controlling and nagged, but perhaps, this time around, he could put up with it.

Shifting, he kissed the back of her neck. "Not really."

"Maybe we can do something later," she said, "me, you, and Meagan. As a family. After I get off of work."

That single word - family - both pieced and warmed his heart. "Sure," he said, "that sounds like fun."

She turned in his arms and kissed him. "Good. I need a shower. I'm really gross."

"Yes you are," he said and kissed her again.

While she went to the bathroom, Lemy got up and searched around for his clothes, snatching his boxers up from by the foot of the bed and his shirt up from its spot on the dresser; he resembled a man on a scavenger hunt. Dressed, he sat on the bed and pulled his shoes on, then went downstairs. Meagan and Lucas sat at the dining room table with Dad, Lucy, and Leni, Dad scanning the paper, his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and Lucy clutching a cup of coffee in her hand. Meagan looked up when he entered and beamed. "Morning, Dad!"

"Good morning," he said, bent, and kissed her forehead. He mussed Lucas's hair, and the little boy pulled away. "Having breakfast?"

Meagan's head bobbed up and down. "Yep. Auntie Lori's making it."

The sounds of pots and pans banging and grease crackling drifted from the kitchen, followed by the good smells of cooking. Bacon, eggs, toast. "She makes a good breakfast," he said genuinely. He rarely ever admitted that because fuck her, but it was true.

"Umhm," Meagan said and patted her stomach. "The best."

Eh, he wouldn't go that far, but okay.

Patting her on the head, he crossed through the kitchen, ignoring Lori at the stove, and went out the back door; the day was bright but cold with a wind from the west that made him shiver. He went to one of the patio chairs, sat, and fished his cigarettes from his hip pocket. He shook one out, popped it into his mouth, and lit in, the harsh smoke rolling thickly into his lungs. He clinched it between his fore and middle fingers, and realized that his hand was shaking.

He needed a drink. Bad. So bad that his head was starting to hurt and his stomach rolled. Maybe he could sneak away and go to the liquor store. Or even the gas station: He wasn't big on beer, but he'd drink it when he had to.

As he smoked, he gazed out at the yard; two squirrels chased each other through the grass, one darting up the trunk of a tree and the other hot on its heels. He took a drag and blew it out; a stiff wind caught it and pushed it away. His foot tapped a restless tempo and his head bobbed back and forth. His mouth was dry, the back of his throat tacky. He thrummed with nervous energy and he was starting to tremble. He told himself eating might help, but he knew that it didn't.

Finishing his cigarette, he flicked it away and went back inside just as Lori carried a plate into the dining room and sat it on the table. He followed and tensed a little when he realized everyone was there; none of them looked up at him, though, except for Leia - she wore jeans and a white, sleeveless button up blouse. She grinned and patted the empty chair next to her like an excitable girl inviting her crush to sit with her at lunch, and he went over, sat.

The food, on separate plates, made its way around the table counterclockwise, each diner taking what they wanted and passing the rest on. Lemy scooped a tiny amount of scrambled eggs onto his plate, then added two strips of bacon, a single sausage link, and a triangular toast half. He stared down at it all and his stomach turned. Nevertheless, he forced himself to eat; it tasted like cardboard in his mouth and went down like broken glass. The inane chatter of his aunts and kids sent a spike of pain into the center of his skull, and he winced.

Leia laid her hand on his leg, and he looked at her; she bit her lower lip and nodded. One thing he'd forgotten about her was how much she liked being fucked - there were times she'd want it three or four times a day. Not that he was complaining, it was just strange to go from no women wanting him to one wanting nothing but.

"How did you sleep last night, Lemy?" Lori asked without looking up from her plate. "I hope the couch was comfortable." There was a snide note to her voice that told him she knew he didn't sleep on the couch.

Before he could reply, Leia spoke up. "He slept with me last night." He detected a challenge in her voice. He blushed and looked down at his food; in his periphery, Lola shook her head sadly and Lori lifted her brows. I knew it. Dad cut a piece of sausage with his fork and impaled it on the tines. "That's good," he said, "you two are...working things out?"

"Yep," Leia said.

Lemy licked his lips. He wanted a drink so fucking bad it hurt. Just one sip. One drop.

"Good," Dad pronounced.

Meagan beamed, as though the idea of her parents working it out pleased her. Which it totally did. She suddenly remembered something. "Dad?"

Lemy looked up, his mind faraway. "Yeah?"

"Can you take me and Lucas to the park?" she asked. "It's supposed to be really warm today."

The park? There was a liquor store a block over. He could leave them on the playground, dash down, and grab a bottle, then hurry back. "Sure," he said.

"Luya will be here at two," Dad said to Meagan and took a bite, "so you'll have to wait."

Meagan slumped her shoulders. "But Luya doesn't like the park."

"True," Dad said, "but your father wants to spend time with her too."

Lemy did...but he wanted that fucking drink just as badly if not, God help him, more. Dad was right, though, he did want to spend time with Luya.

When breakfast was done, Dad, Lola, Lana, and Leia left for work. On her way out the door, Leia gave him a deep kiss and cupped his crotch. "See you later, sexy," she said and winked.

"I'll be here," he said.

And probably still jonesing for a drink, he added to himself.

***

Luya sat on her bed with her knees drawn to her chest, her phone lying next to her and tinny music filtering from the single speaker. She stared absently at the portable TV on her dresser and listened for her mother's rasping smoker's cough from the living room, as she had been for the past hour. When she finally heard it, signifying that she was awake, she pursed her lips in a sour grimace and sullenly crossed her arms. She absolutely did not want to go to her grandparents' house today, and she planned to fight her mother when she tried to make her, but knew vaguely that she would cave and do what she was told.

The problem wasn't that she hated her father, no, if it were that simple, she'd go without a second thought and ignore him. The problem was this: She didn't hate him, and yesterday, as she watched him with Lucas and Meagan, she found herself wanting to like him despite herself, wanting to hug him and spill all of her emotions out in a rush of babbling tears. How much it hurt that he used to avoid her, how terrible it made her feel when he left, how even to this day she thought there must be something wrong with her - he walked out and Mom treated her cold, like she was an unpleasant reminder of him. In her mind's eye, she saw him brushing her tears away, kissing her forehead, and dispensing fatherly advice that, as if by magic, would make everything okay...would make her okay.

She was smart enough to know that the heart is a bald faced liar, and she was not going to listen to it. When you listen to your feelings, you almost always make the wrong decision. Your brain is the organ you should listen to. It can be miserable, paranoid, and crumudgeony, but it was right more often than not. Her father was a drunk, selfish, and didn't care about her, or her siblings. He only cared about himself, even if he fooled himself into thinking he didn't.

Even so, she didn't trust herself around him. Last night, after Mom picked her up and brought her home, she lay awake in bed for hours, struggling to sleep but instead remembering all the times she sat in his lap as a little girl, all the times he held her and kissed her and told her she was pretty even though she knew she wasn't - her hair made her look like an old woman. She remembered the times he held her hand and read her bedtime stories, making her giggle because he slurred all the words. She recalled, with a wistful smile that felt strange on her face, the times he'd curl up next to her in bed or on the couch and pass out, drunk. She loved it when he slept with her because she felt safe, warm, and loved.

Her brain responded by going into panic mode and trudging up bad memories to bring her back to reality, but those were weaker, not as clearly defined, flickering shadows in the corner of a firelit room. She didn't care about those...she just wanted her Daddy.

And that scared her, pissed her off, and made her hate herself more than she already did. If she went to that house today, she couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't fall for the lie.

She didn't want that.

God, she didn't want to let herself believe...only to have her hopes ripped away and dashed on the rocks. She'd been hurt enough already, she didn't want to be hurt anymore. Did that make her a dumb, weak little girl? If so, then that's exactly what she was. She wouldn't admit it out loud, but she would to herself.

I'm a dumb, weak little girl.

There.

It was out.

She didn't want to hate her father, and she didn't hate him...she just wanted him to go away.

Her door opened and Mom stuck her head in; Luya's heart sank and she steeled herself for an argument. "Come on," Mom said, "we're going."

"I don't want to," Luya said, her voice low but firm. She hugged herself tighter. I really, really don't, please don't make me, Mom, please.

Mom hung her head and sighed deeply. She raked her fingers through her snowy hair and looked up at Luya, her eyes dark and stormy. "I don't feel like doing this with you right now. I have to go to work."

Luya opened her mouth, but Mom cut her off. "I don't care that you're pissed your dad walked out. Okay? I don't. You need to drop this nasty fucking attitude and deal with it. We all have problems, and we all have people we hate. He's not staying, okay? He's just here to sign paperwork, then he's leaving. You'll probably never see him again, so just suck it up."

Luya flinched and her stomach dropped. He's leaving...you'll probably never see him again.

She knew that, she really did...but why did it feel like Mom just punched her in the guts? And why did heart throb so fucking bad?

A long time ago, Luya learned not to open up to her mother; Mom didn't care, she was just as selfish as Dad. She eventually extended that to everyone, because if your own Mom doesn't give a shit, who will? She wasn't the tough facade she promoted, though, and sometimes she cracked.

Like now.

"I don't hate him," she said earnestly, "I'm just…" she trailed off. She didn't want to admitted that she was afraid, didn't want to expose her vulnerabilities, but she felt like crying and she didn't know why and she couldn't keep it locked in her chest anymore. She needed to get it out. "I'm -"

Mom threw up her hand. "I don't wanna hear it. You always have an excuse. You and your Dad will get along fine, you're just like him. Now get your ass up and get in the car." She drew away before Luya could speak, and that was that.

Alone. She was alone and had nowhere to turn, no one to talk, no one who really cared, not even Grandpa and Grandma.

Fighting back the urge to cry and winning, but just barely, Luya got up, grabbed her phone, and shoved it into her pocket, a dark mixture of hate, depression, longing, melancholy, and desperation swelling inside her chest like poison gas. She went out into the hall and through the front door, the afternoon sun dazzling her wet eyes. Mom sat behind the wheel, a cigarette clamped between her lips. When Luya got in, she threw the car into reverse and backed up, then started down the road. Luya stared out the window at the passing trailers, lined up like tombstones in a forgotten pauper's field, and tried to figure what to do. Mom was right, Dad was just going to leave again, and if she was taken in by his bullshit, she would be hurt...probably more hurt than she was the last time. She couldn't avoid him; he'd just come after her with that phony I'm sorry, I wanna make it right line.

They were just pulling up in front of Grandpa's house when she made up her mind.

She'd push him away, by any means necessary. She couldn't be hurt by him leaving if she never got close to him...and she couldn't fall for his spiel if she never gave him a chance to use it on her.

Mom lit another cigarette with the nub of the previous one, then slipped it through the crack between the window and the doorframe; bluish smoke hung in the still air like vapor from a bomb blast, obscuring her mother's tired, sallow face. Luya surreptitiously studied her countenance from the corner of her eye: Hazy, bloodshot eyes; pale, doughy flesh; dark bags; premature wrinkles around her lips; her hair messy and uncombed. She looked like a woman who had given up on life, and on herself. Luya knew how that felt, and the urge to give her a hug came over her like a shroud.

Instead, she turned away and opened the door.

"Have a good day," Mom mumbled, then, as a hurried afterthought, "love you."

The lack of conviction in those two words did not surprise Luya, and it normally didn't affect her, but right now it did, and a single tear slid down her cheek. "Yeah," she said, got out, and slammed the door behind her. She pressed her trembling lips together and rapidly blinked against the deluge threatening to overwhelm her, then crossed the yard, dread welling inside her stomach like a balloon. She was caught between a rock and a hard place, like the Soviet penal battalions she learned about in school, the Germans ahead and execution-happy superiors behind. In front of her was a father who didn't love her, and behind her, a mother who didn't love her, and in that moment, she hated both of them so much she sneered.

Reaching out, she opened the door and went inside, her breathing coming fast and heavy as her rage rolled in her stomach like tar. Her father sat on the couch flanked by Meagan and Lucas; when she closed the door, he looked over at her and flashed a weak, hopeful smile that would possibly disarm her if she looked at it too long.

"Hey," he said.

For a terrible moment, Luya thought a return greeting was going to fall from her lips whether she wanted it to or not; a meek, unguarded hi lodged in her throat, and she swallowed it. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she passed through the living room and went aimlessly into the kitchen, not knowing where to go or what to do, just wanting to be away from him, away from the possibility of being taken in by his lies and then devastated the way she was two years ago. She stood by the stove for an indecisive moment, then went out the back door; she'd sit under the tree and think about boys...or listen to music on her phone...or anything to get her mind off her father.

She crossed to the tree and sat in her usual spot; the earth was canned here, like a chair, and the trunk was slightly curved in a gentle C-shape; she was more comfortable here than anywhere else in her life, even her own bed in her own home. No one bothered her when she sat under the tree, and her thoughts and fears were lessened, as though it blocked them the way it blocked the wind. She leaned against the bark, drew her knees up, and hugged them to her chest, the soles of her dirty white Vans scraping in the dirt. She let a deep breath out through her nostrils and gazed across across the way at the weathered stockade fence separating the yard from the next one over, her eyebrows lowering when she spotted chalky pink writing scrawled across the graying wood. She squinted and made out CAPT DAD, FIRST MATE MEAGAN, CABIN BOY LUCAS. Oh, God, she thought and rolled her eyes, Meagan and her pirate shit. Glad she's having fun with Dad-and-dash. When he left again, she'd see. Not that Luya wanted her to, but...what are you going to do?

Meagan looked so happy, though, and Luya kind of hated her for it; she wanted to be happy, she wanted to smile and laugh and not be wracked with fucking bullshit bad feelings and thoughts. If I did something different, would things be better? If I tried harder, would Dad have spent more time with me? What did I do to make Mom hate me? She didn't want to pay lip service to a lie, though, she didn't want to pretend that she had faith in her father, or front like she didn't know he was going to just walk away again.

Sighing, she glanced at the back door and froze as Dad slipped out and came down the steps. Ugh, go away. Why can't you just leave me alone?

He reached the bottom and started over, his head down and his shoulders slumped; he reminded her of a man being lead to the electric chair, and a rush of indignation rose in her chest. Was dealing with her really that fucking bad? Is that why he hid when she knocked on the door and asked if he was there?

Maybe she was being oversensitive and unfair, but she couldn't help it. If she could, don't you think she would?

Dad was six feet away when he designed to look up; a warm shaft of sunlight colored his face in a glowing golden hue reminiscent of saints in Renaissance paintings she saw in books. She hugged her knees tighter and looked down at her lap. He stopped and stood over her, but she ignored him, willing him to go away but secretly, on some level, hoping that he wouldn't.

"Luya," he said, her name coming out in a sigh.

She swallowed.

When she didn't respond, he dropped to one knee and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she squirmed quickly away, his fingers clutching air. If he touched her, she thought irrationally, she'd turn into another Meagan: Happy, carefree, and dumb, too fucking blind to realize that she worshipped her tin god of a father in the shadow of a hammer-head, too benighted to realize that sooner or later, it would drop.

Dad sighed. "I can't make up for what I did," he said, his voice a croak. "And I know you're...you're upset. I messed up. In a lot of ways." He stopped and collected his thoughts. "I'm sorry. I want us to have a good relationship from here on out. I know that's not going to happen overnight, and I know you're gonna be...wary, and that's fine. Just give me a chance, please."

Emotion welled in his voice as he spoke, and Luya could feel her defenses starting to crumble. She realized she wanted to give him a chance...but simply couldn't. "Go away," she said.

From the corner of her eye, she saw his lips purse in a wounded frown and his eyes flicker in pain. Her chest tightened; she was so close to hugging him and saying I'm sorry, Dad that her spine tingled.

Dad got to his feet and stared longingly down at her. "I'm taking Lucas and Meagan to the park. Can you at least come with us? I-I won't bother you. Okay?"

"Whatever," she heard herself say.

He nodded. "Okay. We're gonna walk over in, like, ten minutes."

"Yeah," she muttered.

He started to say something else, but thought better of it, turned, and walked away, the door closing behind him. She was alone now save for a sweep of wind driven leaves dancing in the falling rays of the sun. If she honestly thought he was going to stay and change, she would forgive him in a heartbeat. He wasn't going to stay and change, though.

Sighing, she got to her feet and went inside.

***

Rees-Headley Park sat on eight acres of land wedged between Route 15 and the upper reaches of Main Street, so far to the north that it was almost across the town line in Elk Park. A winding river bisected it, and dense trees covered most of its northwestern quadrant. Concrete walkways zigzagged through the lower portions, servicing pavilions, a baseball field, two different picnic areas (complete with rusted metal grills that reminded Lemy of headstones), and a playground. He hadn't been here since the night he slept off a drunk under the monkey bars, and as he sat on a bench next to Luya, his hands shaking in his lap, he wondered if winos still made camp in the woods on the other side of the path. Winos left behind bottles, and more times than you'd expect, there was something still in them. Rarely much, just a mouthful, but that's all he needed, something to take the edge off.

He licked his lips and found Meagan; she was pushing Lucas on the swing and holding her glasses against her face so that they didn't slip off. The whole walk over, she talked nonstop and by the time they actually got here, his head was throbbing and he felt like he was running a fever. That girl was a motormouth...cute, but a motor mouth nonetheless. He stole a sidelong glance at Luya; she watched kids climbing over the equipment with a scowl on her face; jaw clenched, eyes hard, hair rustling in the breeze. They'd been here for nearly an hour and a half, and he tried again and again to get her talking, but she wouldn't - nothing he was doing was working and he was starting to think it was hopeless, that she'd never forgive him no matter how much he begged. He wanted to cry...and to shake her until she snapped out of it. He made a mistake, okay? Did she really have to hold a grudge?

Only, truth be told, he made multiple mistakes with her, more than he did with Meagan and Lucas. When Lupa kicked him out, he turned his back on her and Luya. His line of reasoning was fucked up, he realized now, but at the time, angry and bitter, it made sense. Why keep playing father to her? Looking back, he was disgusted with himself, and wished to God that he would have gotten it through his thick, stupid head that he was her Dad regardless of anything else.

He licked his lips and took a deep breath through his nose. He needed a drink now more than he did this morning, and if he didn't get it soon, he was going to come undone. He was fidgety, restless, and his mood was sour. He already came close to snapping at Meagan for talking about fucking pirates, and Luya...why did she have to make this so fucking hard?

Not drinking did this to him...made him grouchy, irritable, on edge. That liquor store was only a couple blocks away, he could be there and back in no time. He watched Meagan pushing her brother; his soared back and forth like a pendulum, his brown hair fluttering and his little legs pumping furiously. He planned on getting away long enough to get a bottle, but only a piece of shit leaves their kids alone to go buy booze, right? Then again, Meagan was responsible, and Luya was here. Hell, when he was Meagan's age he went all over the place by himself, and sometimes he brought Lizy along with him - she was around Lucas's age. No big. Life in a small town, you know?

He drummed his fingers on his knees and squeezed his eyes closed. If he didn't drink, he'd be in a bad mood, and if he was in a bad mood, he might be an asshole to his kids. Therefore, getting that bottle was the right thing to do. It was for their benefit as much as it was for his. They didn't deserve to have their father be grumpy to them.

Mind made up, he looked at Luya. "Can you watch them for a minute?" he asked and nodded toward Meagan and Lucas.

She turned her head slightly and flicked her eyes in his direction, her face a stony mask of mistrust. Was she going to give him a hard time about this, too? "Why?" she asked.

"I have to do something," he said quickly. "I'll be right back."

She looked him up and down like a judge regarding a particularly pathetic defendant, her nose crinkling in distaste. "What do you have to do?"

He started to snap but stopped himself. Exterting inhuman patience, he said, "I need to get cigarettes. I'll be right back."

Luya rolled her eyes and shook her head as though he were insufferable. Her mother used to do the same thing; such an insulting fucking gesture. "I didn't come here to babysit."

Yeah? He thought, why did you come? You've been fucking miserable the entire time. You should have stayed at home.

That thought shocked him, and shame colored his cheeks. He legitimately wanted her to come, though he was hoping things would go a little better than they had. Still, this is why he needed his drink. "Please, just watch them for five minutes. I'll be right back."

She stared straight ahead, didn't speak, didn't nod, nothing. Lemy got to his feet, hesitated, then walked away, joining the path and following it past a marble fountain. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that neither Lucas nor Meagan saw him go, then hurried his step, his hands thrusting into his pockets. Ahead, an old man sat on a bench and tossed pieces of bread to a gaggle of ducks, and further down the path, a woman in tight white pants and a pink halter top pushed a set of twins in a double stroller. To his right, a group of college aged boys tossed a Frisbee, and to his left, a black family crowded around one of the picnic tables, Dad or Uncle Bill manning the grill. The scent of cooking hamburgers drifted into Lemy's nose, and his stomach rumbled sickly.

She'd come around, he thought of Luya, she just needed time, that's all. It wasn't fair of him to expect her to take to him the moment he walked through the door. Not that he did, he knew she'd be distant, but he was hoping she wouldn't hold it against him too much.

He was at Main now, cars passing in either lane and people moving along the sidewalk, enjoying the day. Across the street, the new high school, a gleaming construct of brick and glass, stood like a castle on an English moor, the athletic field on one side and a vast parking lot on the other. The old one was on the other side of town - he dropped out two years before they decommissioned it. These days it was a community center.

Hanging a right, he crossed a green truss bridge spanning the river; town rose up in front of him, quint buildings flanking tree-lined streets. Despite its close proximity to Detroit, Royal Woods was a good place to live...if fucking boring. And lacking in jobs. That was the main reason he left: There was shit for work here. If he stayed, it could very well be a long time before he found anything...anything worthwhile, at least.

Maybe Dad could talk Lana into hiring him for the business. He was pretty good at siding and roofing, and they could use the help. She might grumble about it, but she'd probably have him anyway.

He imagined them working together, the air tense between them, and shook his head. Nah, fuck that.

Walking quick and feeling guilty, he reached the liquor store five minutes later and went inside; an Arab man in a black Under Armor T stood behind the counter and chattered into a cell phone. Lemy went down the first aisle and browsed the selection: Vodka, gin, rum, mixes. He reached the end and went down the next, looking for Canadian Mist but not seeing it. Damn it. Guess he'd have to settle for Captain Morgan. He grabbed a bottle and took it to the counter, where he paid, half expecting the cashier to rob him like the one in New York. Funny how these places are all run by Arabs, motels by Indians, and laundries by the Chinese. Some people might call that racist, but in his experience, it was true. Why did certain ethnicities gravitate toward certain businesses? There had to be a reason. Chinese restaurants made sense because, you know, Chinese people cooked and ate Chinese food, but what, did Arab people have a long and ancient tradition of operating 7-11s?

The cashier put the bottle in a paper bag and handed it to Lemy. He shoved it into his jacket's inner pocket, went outside, and stopped to light a cigarette. He was hyper aware of it pressing against his chest, its shape, its fullness, the way the contents sloshed with every step. There was an outbuilding at the park with bathrooms and showers - he'd go in there and take a few nips to fortify himself, hidden from view like a dirty secret.

Yeah, that didn't happen. He was on the bridge when he broke, pulled it out, twisted the cap off, and took a deep drink, the liquid burning his throat and filling his stomach like acid, its heat spreading through his body and melting the ice formed on his bones. His hand shook and he spilled some of it down his chin.

He pulled it away from his lips, swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and screwed the cap back on, then returned it to hs pocket. Already he felt better, and as he made his way back to the park, he whistled. All was right in the world, except for Luya, but that was a work in progress.

Ten minutes later, he walked onto the playground and stopped when he saw Lucas and Meagan sitting on the bench, Lucas bent at the waist and Meagan rubbing his back with a concerned expression on her face. Shit, Lemy thought, something happened. His heart sank, and he rushed over, the sound of his son's wet sniffles finding his ears and sending an icepick of dread slicing through his heart. "What's wrong?" he asked as he walked up.

"He fell off the swing and skinned his knee," Meagan said. Lemy knelt in front of the little boy, and instantly saw the torn skin. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God it wasn't bad. "You alright, buddy?" he asked and put his hand on Lucas's shoulder.

Lucas nodded. "Yeah," he said simply, his voice thick with tears.

"Where were you?" Meagan asked.

He didn't know if the accusation in her voice was really there or if he was only imagining it, but it grated him anyway. "I went to the store," he said, "where's Luya? I told her to watch you."

"She said it wasn't her problem and went over there," Meagan said and nodded to her left. Lemy followed her gaze, spotting Luya sitting under a tree and staring down at her phone. Anger gripped Lemy's chest; he got to his feet and went over, his hands clenching and unclenching.

He stood over her and she ignored him just like she always did. Lemy took a deep breath through his nose and let it out evenly. "Really?" he asked.

"What?" she retorted sharply.

He started to cuss but stopped himself. The point was to thaw their relationship, not throw it into deep freeze. Getting ahold of his emotions, he said, "I asked you to watch them, Luya." His voice was strained, like a wire ready to snap. She wore a smug little expression that reminded him so much of Lupa it was sickening, and he hated himself for wanting to slap it off.

"I did watch them," she spat. "He was showing off jumped off the swing. It was his own fault, and I'm not a doctor, so…"

Lemy pressed his fingers to his throbbing temple and rubbed a firm circle. Okay, apparently it was a mistake leaving her in charge of her brother and sister. "Alright, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have left."

She swiped her thumb across the screen and hummed. How casual she was about this, how callous, struck him deep in the guts and he sighed. "What do I have to do, Luya?" he asked seriously. "What do you need from me to show you I'm sorry and I want to be a good father?"

For a moment, she looked down at her phone, then looked up, her eyes squinting against the sun. "You can start by fucking off."


	9. Open Wounds

Meagan reached across the kitchen table, grabbed the Elmer's glue, and carefully squeezed a series of dots on the back of the wood scrap she took from the garage. It was small and flimsy, about five inches across by five inches tall and came, she figured, from a piece of plyboard. She plastered her tongue to her upper lip in determination and worked with surgical precision, taking great pains not to smear any. Lucas watched from beside her with bated breath, his hands on his lap and squirming like two restless snakes.

They had been working on this project off and on since yesterday afternoon, and so far it was perfect - this was the moment of truth, though, and any slip here could spell disaster with a capital D. The weight of the world, then, was on Meagan's shoulders, and beads of nervous sweat formed at the crown of her forehead.

Done, she sat the glue aside, pinched the wood between her thumb and forefinger, and picked it up. "Rock," she said, and Lucas handed her a small, smooth, oval shaped stone; it was cool, dry, and heavy in her hand, and licking her lips, she tossed an errant strand of hair from her face and slowly, gently, brought the wood and rock together, pressing the latter to the former and smooshing the glue. For a terrible second, she thought she used too much and that it would drip, but, whew, it didn't.

She and Lucas exchanged a glance, and she grinned. "There. Now we just have to let it dry." She sat the...thing aside and laced her fingers on the edge of the table like she was going to pray. She didn't know what to call the contraption, but it was pretty nonetheless. On the face of the wood was a collaborative drawing - Dad in the center flanked on either side by her and Lucas, each holding one of his hands. All of them were smiling. Green grass covered the bottom, and the squiggly sun beamed down on them as if in pride. It wasn't supposed to be squiggily, but drawing on wood isn't the easiest thing in the world, and she kind of messed up.

Over their heads was the legend WE LOVE DAD. She wrote that herself because Lucas's handwriting was still pretty bad even though he worked on it at school.

The rock, which she found a long time ago and kept because it was pretty, was default gray when they started, now it was a rainbow of complimenting colors that reminded her of an Easter egg.

Meagan studied the drawing with a slight frown of annoyance. Of course Lucas's half looked better. Her heart twinged in apprehension when she realized she should have let him do the whole thing so that it would look better.

Hopefully Dad liked it regardless.

Excitement burst in her chest and she leaned forward to see if it was dry yet, but it wasn't because it had only been, like, two seconds.

Lucas darted his eyes from her to the rock and back again. "Not done," she said and sat back with a sigh. She looked at the clock on the wall, then at her brother. "You should draw a picture of Dad." she said, "you know, to fill the time."

He shrugged. "Eh. I only things I love."

Meagan lifted a quizzical brow. "Don't you love Dad?"

"He's alright," Lucas said noncommittally. "I like him. I don't know about love." He drew the last word out. Loooovvvveee. She started to chide him for not loving his own father, but stopped herself because, eh, he'd come around. He basically just met the guy whereas she kind of had a head start.

She looked at the clock again.

Wow, not even thirty seconds. Time's really dragging today.

It was mid-afternoon and they'd been here for nearly an hour, ever since coming home from the park. The first place she went was to the bathroom with Lucas so she could clean his wound. It wasn't very bad and didn't even hurt anymore (until she put alcohol on it), but she had to make sure he didn't get an infection. Infections are nooooooo joke; he could lose his whole leg, and maybe some of his hip bone too. "You remember what Dad said, right?" she asked suddenly.

Lucas's brow furrowed in confusion.

"About not telling anyone he went to the store," Meagan clarified.

Before leaving the park, Dad asked them not to say anything about him leaving, and though Meagan thought it was a little strange, she was committed to not betraying his trust. She wouldn't tell anyone he wasn't there when Lucas fell down, and she wouldn't tell anyone that he smelled like beer and had a glass bottle of it in his jacket.

Not that she was happy about that last part. Dad being drunk was a bad thing and usually lead to fights and arguments, but things were different now, so maybe it wouldn't.

A sharp pang of dread went rippled through her stomach. She hoped it wouldn't. When Dad used to drink before, Mom would get mad and they'd yell at each other, and sometimes even break stuff too. Mom would throw things at Dad, and Dad would flip tables and knock the TV over. Meagan couldn't count the number of times she laid awake in bed listening to them, her heart thumping in fright and her stomach sick. If he could yell at Mom and break her things, then it stood to reason that he could do the same to her. And if Mom could smash stuff against the wall because of Dad, then she could smash stuff against the wall because of her.

Heh, kid logic, Meagan realized now, but she really didn't want any of that happening again, and Dad getting drunk was always the first step on the road to ruin.

No, she wouldn't say anything; in fact, she'd help him hide it so Mom didn't get mad. Whatever it took to avoid scary fights.

The back door opened and Luya slipped in, closing it behind her. Neither Meagan or Lucas turned to look at her as she went to the fridge and opened it. Since getting home, she'd been sitting under the tree and looking constipated. Meagan was kind of mad at her because she acted like a real jerk to dad all day, and you could tell it was getting to him. In fact, after dealing with Lucas's cut and before sitting down to finish off the project, she went out back to tell her older sister off. You're being really mean to Dad and it's hurting his feelings.

Luya regarded her with a scathing glare that made Meagan want to chafe; she stood firm, though, crossing her arms over her chest because that's what you do when you dress someone down...and maybe because she felt vulnerable otherwise. Dad's a drunk and he's leaving soon, Luya said and looked away. He doesn't care about me, or you, or anyone else. He has no feelings.

Those words took her like a broadsword to the mid-section, and her eyes narrowed. Why would she say such an awful thing? Dad cared a lot about them. That's not true. You're the one who doesn't care about Dad. He's trying to do better and you keep rubbing his face in the past.

Luya tensed, and when she looked up at Meagan again, her lips were a tight, white slash and her eyes burned with intensity that knocked Meagan back a step. Go the fuck away. You wanna be daddy's little girl, go do it, but don't come crying to me when he walks out on you again.

That was not going to happen.

Was it?

For a while, as she colored her end of the drawing, she wondered, but eventually reached the conclusion that it wasn't. Luya was just a snotty teenager who was too dumb to realize that people grow and change, they don't stay the same forever. Dad made a lot of mistakes in the past but now he was trying to be good, and Luya didn't want to see that. She wanted to see Dad as he was before.

He was trying.

Then why is he drinking?

Well...people can drink. There's no law that says they can't. Pirates drink all the time, and so do doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and even priests. Thinking back, it wasn't even really Dad's drinking that started most of the arguments with Mom, it was her not liking his drinking. He'd be fine, sitting on the couch or at the kitchen table, then she'd come out and start yelling at him, calling him a jobless bum, and a deadbeat, and an alkie, and half-inch. It was her fault when you got right down to it.

But she was different now. She didn't yell as much, so maybe things would be okay.

She took a deep breath, leaned forward, and checked the rock-n-wood thing for Dad. The glue was still a little tacky. She glanced over her shoulder when Luya went back out the door, and bunched her lips to one side in thought. She wished Luya would get over it already and stop being an A-hole to dad.

Was there anything she could do? She thought back to a cartoon she saw once where these two sisters weren't speaking to each other, and their brother contrived to get them back together by hosting a spaghetti dinner and inviting each without the other's knowledge. It worked...but only after a giant food fight that left the room a wreck.

That was obviously impractical in real life, but maybe she could get Luya to see the light some other way.

She checked the glue again, and it was dry enough; she was too excited to wait any longer. "Done," she said in a singsong voice and picked it up, being super careful to not break it. Lucas got to his feet and together they went into the living room, Meagan holding the gift in her palms like a Faberge egg and taking slow, cautious baby steps and Lucas walking beside, ready to catch it if she tripped.

Dad sat on the couch, one leg crossed and his arm draped across the back. On TV, a talking CNN head went on an on about the president's lack of foreign policy experience. He glanced over as they walked up, his eyes red and watery, and cracked a tired smile. "Hey, where'd you guys go?" he asked thickly, even though Meagan told him they would be working in the kitchen.

That didn't matter, though. "Here," she said proudly and held out the present, "we made you something."

Dad squinted at it, then held out his hands; they trembled slightly, and as he took it, Meagan's heart leapt into her throat, sure he was going to drop it. He brought it real close to his face and looked at it like he was tired and couldn't see straight, his lips mumbling as he read. Suspense squeezed Meagan's chest and she rocked back and forth on the balls of her heels, her hands clasping behind her back. "Do you like it?" she asked.

He looked up at her and smiled. "I love it," he said. He leaned over, sat it on the coffee table, and held his arms out. Meagan hugged him, and the stale smell of alcohol and sour sweat filled her nose, bringing a slight frown to her face. Next he hugged Lucas. "It's really pretty. Thank you, guys."

"You're welcome," Meagan said.

When she and Lucas were alone again in the kitchen, he furrowed his brow. "Dad smells funny."

"No he doesn't," Meagan lied and sat at the table.

"Yes he does."

Meagan shrugged. "I didn't smell anything."

But she did, and it smelled like trouble.

***

In the backyard, Luya took a drink from a can of Coca-Cola then sat it in the dirt next to her. It was getting late and the light was beginning to take on a feeble, too-golden hue that signified the coming sunset. Shafts of brilliance fell through the wavering boughs above, casting shadows across the ground, and a gust of wind blew across the yard, sending goosebumps racing up her arms. She was cold, but it was more than the blustery day; it was a deep, marrow-deep chill that permeated her entire body from within.

Dad was drinking.

That meant she was right; he hadn't changed. He was the same old selfish drunk he always was. She'd been telling herself this since yesterday, but even so, there was a small, gemlike flicker of hope in the center of her heart. Hope that she was wrong. Hope that he really was serious about being a father to her and not getting blitzed anymore.

Now that hope was snuffed and she was face-to-face with the realization that her father was a lost cause. Earlier, at the park, that stung deeply, but now, soothing numbness was starting to creep in and you know what? It didn't seem so bad. Oh, she was mad at him for being such a piece of shit, but she'd gone almost four years without a father, and it wasn't that big of a deal, hadn't been that big of a deal until she found out he was coming back. A year ago, a month ago, even a week ago, she was fine with her life, but then Dad came along and ripped all her old wounds open again. They hurt and they bled, but now the flow was staunched. Looking back over the past two days, she saw how dumb she'd been, and she was ashamed of herself. Well...no more. She wasn't giving her father any power over her, positive or negative. She wasn't going to think about how much she wanted him around, or how much she wanted him to leave, or how mad she was, or anything. She fucking refused to be one of those pitiful little girls with daddy issues. Oh, my father wasn't around, boo hoo; let me fuck every guy in the world to try and fill the hole in my heart. Hell no, fuck that. If Dad left a hole in her heart, she'd rather just take the whole goddamn thing out.

Tomorrow, she was staying home whether Mom liked it or not, and this time she would fight her on the matter, no more yes, Mommy, whatever you say, Mommy. Starting now, that man in there was dead to her. No, actually, he never even existed.

She snatched the can up, denting in between her fingers, and took a sip, the cold liquid bracing and sweet.

It wasn't her fault that he avoided her, wasn't her fault he never came to see her after he and Mom broke up, wasn't her fault that on the rare occasion she did see him, he acted awkward and strange, like he'd rather be somewhere else. Oh, yuck, it's Luya, my stupid daughter; beam me up, Scotty.

No, it was his fault for being a stupid boozehound.

But then there was Meagan and Lucas.

He never did that to them. Even when Leia dumped him and he spent a few months living with her and Mom, he made time for Meagan, brought her over for the night, played with her, cuddled her, never once acted like she was a regret instead of his daughter. Luya remembered peeking around her door frame and watching them on the living room floor, laughing and playing dolls together, remembered hating her little sister's guts and wanting to hurt her so she felt the same thing Dad made her feel. In the present, her lips twisted and her nails dug into the padding of her palm; throbbing hurt and rage filled the center of her chest like an abscessed tooth, and the memory of Dad paying all his attention to Meagan while giving her shit made her want to march inside and punch the little bitch's glasses in, made her relish all the times she pulled her hair or stuck out her foot and tripped her. One time, Meagan took off her glasses and sat them on the table. When she came back, they were gone, and she never found them again; Luya broke them and threw them out her bedroom window. As far as she knew, they were still in the tangled grass, rotting like a corpse in a shallow grave.

It wasn't him, it was her. It had to be. What did she do? What could she have done or said differently?

Hot tears welled in her eyes, and that pissed her off to the point of shaking. She snatched the can, drew it back, and threw it across the yard; it flipped end over end, spilling amber cola as it went, and landed next to one of Lucas's dumb riding toys. Fire swept through her, and she got to her feet, her shoulders rising and falling with each primal, nostril-flaring pant and her hands balling into fists. She looked around for something to hit, something to destroy, something to let it all out on, and her eyes fell upon Meagan's pink foam pirate sword. Luya stalked over, picked it up, and tore into it with her cracked, black-painted nails, ripping chunks out and scattering them across the grass. That wasn't good enough, though; the hate didn't go away...if anything, it got stronger, darker, more malignant. She spun, crossed to the tree, and slammed it against the rough bark as hard as she could, her hips twisting like a batter on the mound. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a sneer and her watery eyes flashed with icy malice. Beads of pain slid down her cheeks like flecks of diamond, and feeling them pissed her off even more than she already was.

She threw the sword aside, went over to Lucas's riding toy, drew back her foot, and kicked it; hot pain burst in her foot and snaked up her leg, but she didn't care; in fact, she savored it, letting it flow through her like the spreading warmth of a stiff drink. It skitted away and landed on its side. She stalked to it and kicked it again, with the other foot this time. She hissed through her teeth and looked around for something else to kill, but the world was a shimmering blur. She blinked her eyes and pressed her quivering lips together, telling herself she wouldn't cry but knowing that she would anyway.

Covering her shame, she turned and hurried over to the tree, passing her spot and sitting on the other side, hidden from the house. There, she drew her knees to her chest, hugged them tight, and gave into the tears.

***

It started when Leia came home, because of course it did. She was fire and ice, the alpha and the omega, a good thing and a terrible thing all rolled into one. He knew in an abstract way that it would happen, but as the Captain dulled his senses and swaddled his mind in warm cheer, he stopped caring. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

She got home from work shortly after five. She came through the door, grinned at him, and leaned over the back of the couch to kiss his cheek. She drew sharply back at the last minute, her brows angling down in an angry V. Oh, great, here it comes.

"Have you been drinking?" she spat.

Why yes, dear Leia, I have been drinking. I'm an alcoholic after all.

For some reason that made him snicker to himself. It was true. He was a drunk and he couldn't help it. He told himself he could stop whenever he wanted, but that bottle came with a hook at the bottom, and for almost twenty years it had been lodged firmly in his cheek. When he was sober, it bothered him, but now, wrapped in wool and high above the ground, it didn't, because why would it? Everyone needs something to get through their day - for him it was alcohol. It's not like he was a violent drunk or went into work pissing and falling down. Why did everyone make such a big deal out of it?

Leia exhaled through her nose, her clear eyes muddling. "Yeah, real funny," she said, her voice tight.

"It's not that," he said, "I just...I had a funny thought. Yes, I had a little bit, but I'm weaning myself off, okay?"

He turned to look over his shoulder; Leia stood over him like a stern mother, her arms folded over her chest, her eyebrows raised incredulously, and her pink lips puckered as though she'd just tasted something particularly sour. That was a look he'd seen a million times in the past - about his drinking, about not cleaning the house from top to bottom while she was at work even though when he came home from work, it was a disaster and she had an excuse, about not making enough money, about leaving the toilet seat up, about not taking his shoes off at the door, about not picking the right tampons up at the pharmacy. It was an expression you gave an especially stupid child after he wears your patience paper thin; insulting, condescending, lofty, and contemptuous.

A million other people gave him that same look over the years, and it mildly offended him, but when Leia did it, it fucking enraged him. Turning away, he pointed his eyes at the TV and took a deep, calming breath. "I can't go cold turkey, okay? I've done it before and it gives me the DTs."

He was half expecting Leia to take mercy on him.

But she didn't; she sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. "I've heard that before." Her tone dripped with sarcasm and Lemy's nerves grated.

"I'm being serious, I-I'm stopping."

She stared down at him and drew a deep breath through her nose...then shook her head and walked away, climbing the stairs with sharp, angry steps, her ponytail lashing from side to side. Lemy watched her go with a mixture of longing and hatred. That was Leia for you; all she did was nag. He could never do right in her eyes. I have high standards, she used to say in a snotty tone. Yeah, but she only held him to those standards, no one else...not even herself. She never missed an opportunity to lay into him, and you know what? He had just as much chance to return the favor, but he didn't, because he didn't want to fight...and because he loved her, and when you love someone, you shouldn't delight in ripping their head off. Some days he came home from work and the house was a fucking disgusting pigsty - toys and dirty clothes strewn across the living room floor, crumbs ground into the carpet, full diapers balled up and tossed into the corner...and there was Leia asleep on the couch with baby Meagan, without a care in the world because she knew Lemy wouldn't make a stink. Yet when it was his day off, he'd vacuum, sweep, and pick up after himself. What did she do when she came through the door? Latched onto the one thing that wasn't done and dress him down for it like he was a fucking piece of shit. You were home alllll day and you couldn't do the dishes? Really, Lemy? And that wasn't the end of it, she'd get all pissy and then nurse it for the rest of the day, snapping at him for the slightest infraction and talking to him like an idiot. Then she'd honestly wonder why he sat in his chair and watched TV instead of lavishing her with love and affection. Kind of hard to do that when you want to punch that person in their face.

Then there was Meagan. Leia never let him be a parent. If he tried to discipline her or make a decision, Leia would swoop in like the angel of death and smite him into the ground. Oh, he was good enough to change every single diaper and give all the baths and feed their daughter, but not not to be a father.

A nanny. That's what he was, her fucking nanny.

Now his mood was dark.

Thanks a lot, Leia.

He looked around, made sure no one was watching, then pulled the bottle out and took a quick nip before replacing it.

And she wondered why he drank. He did it to get away from her. He loved her and wanted things to work, but he didn't think they ever would. She was always going to be a fucking control freak and that was that.

He didn't know whether to be angry or depressed, so he lapsed into both, and was still fuming fifteen minutes later when Dad and Lana got home, Lana going up the stairs and Dad hanging his jacket from the rack. "Can you come in my office, Lemy?" he asked, and Lemy tensed. What a fucking smug thing to say. Step into my office hur hur hur. Just having an office was kind of snobbish. What, you can't do your taxes at the kitchen table? You have to feel important and have an "office"?

"Yeah," he said and got unsteadily to his feet, vertigo descending over him like a ton of bricks. He told himself that he was being dickish because of Leia, but that wasn't the whole truth. He had a lot of resentment built up toward his father and if he wasn't careful, his loosened tongue would unleash it all.

Sure that he wasn't going to fall, he went around the side of the couch and stumbled a little. A flicker of concern ran across Dad's face...then he sniffed the air, and the corners of his mouth turned down. Yeah, I'm drinking, what of it? Lemy thought defiantly. I'm not even bothering anyone.

Turning away, Dad lead him into the office and sat at the desk with a weary sigh. Lemy closed the door behind him, crossed to the armchair, and sank into it. Dad turned in his seat, leaned forward, and propped his forearms on his knees, looking for all the world like a coach preparing for an Important Talk with a wayward player. Lemy had seen that expression a million times too. Lemy, you have to quit drinking; Lemy, you need to find a job; Lemy, stop cooking meth in my garage. He swallowed a smirk at that last thought. Believe it or not, it wasn't his idea to make that shit, it was that girl he was seeing. What was her name? He couldn't remember right now and he didn't fucking care, she was trash. Hey, I know how we can make some extra money, me and my ex used to do it all the time. She was right about the money part - he made more selling that crap in a week than he made at Taco Bell in a month. He didn't use it, though...not much. He was careful with hard drugs; he shot up here and there, smoked the occasional rock, and did smack now and again, but none of that junk ever hooked him like the bottle.

Dad stared down at the floor for a long, tense moment, then looked up, her eyes pooled with worry. "So, you're drinking."

That statement hung heavy in the air.

Lemy shifted and took a deep breath. He hated having to explain himself to Dad...and to Leia...and to everyone else. His family always questioned and second-guessed everything he did.

Like he was a fucking child.

"Yes," he said, his voice tight and guarded, "I'm working on weaning myself off. I can't just quit."

Dad nodded. "I know. I understand that. But you've said that in the past and I find it a little hard to believe."

His tone was even and low, lacking accusation and bounding with patience. Still, it rubbed Lemy wrong, and he balled his hand into a fist. "Well, I really am this time," he lied.

Dad pursed his lips and studied him as if for signs of deceit, and Lemy squirmed under his appraising gaze, his eyes darting shamefully to his lap. Sighing, Dad said, "Alright. If you say so, I'll take your word for it."

That sounded like patronizing bullshit to Lemy, but he ignored it.

"I wanted to talk to you about...possibly...moving in."

Lemy tensed at the final two words.

"I still want you to sign the paperwork," Dad continued, "but those kids need their father, Lemy, and they need him sober. I want you to come back and do what's right, I just want to make sure that you're serious this time. I won't stand for the shit that went on before. I won't let your drinking, or your drugs, or anything else affect them."

A burning blush crept across the back of Lemy's neck and his heart blasted a rhythm of wrath against his ribs. Dad's gaze was firm and unwavering; he meant it, and Lemy couldn't help the abiding humiliation in his breast. "I want you to come back and do right by your kids. I know you want it too. You've had a lot problems over the years, but you're a good man, Lemy. You just need to realize that your actions impact the people around you. You might think that you getting drunk doesn't bother anyone, but it does."

Lemy blinked. He had that same thought in the living room - why does everyone make such a big deal out of it?

Glancing down at his hands as though he couldn't look Lemy in the eye, Dad sighed. "Do you remember the night Lizy was at work and you were taking care of Lucas?"

Lemy's face crinkled in thought. There were a lot of nights like that - Lizy left in the evening and he babysat Lucas until bedtime.

Then it dawned on him, and his face flushed with shame. Once, not long after Lizy left, he started drinking and that's all he could remember.

"He was standing in crib crying and covered in shit." Dad said now. "And you were passed out in the corner...full of piss and puke."

Lemy swallowed thickly. He didn't like to think about that...was glad he couldn't remember it, and hoped that no one would ever bring it up again. "I wanted to strangle you," Dad said, repeating the same line Lemy had heard again and again. "Honestly, I was furious." He turned his face up, and Lemy could see the ghost of that rage in his eyes like a swirl of ash from a fire long extinguished. "I sat by and watched as you systematically neglected, rejected, and dismissed the most precious thing in the world -"

"I didn't -"

Dad held up his hand, palm out. "I'm talking," he said. "You have a responsibility to these children, Lemy, and you smirked it. You might not think you did, you might not have meant to, but you did. I'm not trying to rub your nose in it, I just want you to understand how serious this is. These are your children. They need you. Please, change. Don't do it for me, don't do it for Leia, don't do it for yourself; do it for them."

For a long time afterward, Lemy stared down at his lap and considered his father's words. He was right, he supposed; his actions did impact his kids.

Now he felt even more like shit than ever before.

"Alright," he said.

"They love you, Lemy, and they really want you to be their Dad. They don't want me, they don't want their moms, they want you."

That sentiment rang through his head as he went back into the living room and sat in front of the TV. His children needed him and he turned his nose up at them because he was selfish, a fundamentally broken person. Why, he didn't know. He suffered no trauma in his childhood, Dad wasn't evil or abusive, no one molested him, nothing stuck out. He just...he wasn't put together right, he thought, and no matter what he did, he'd always be a shattered wreck. He could hold himself together with glue and duct tape, but under pressure, he'd come apart, like a ceramic mug with a fracture along the side.

His kids deserved better than him.

They deserved…

They deserved his father.

He felt like crying.

Instead, he reached into his jacket, took out the bottle, and drank deeply, the liquor filling and rocking him in its comforting arms. Dad was right about him being selfish - everyone who said he was selfish was right.

Not anymore. He'd sign the paperwork...then he'd leave. Meagan, Lucas, and Luya would be better off without him. Dad said they wanted him, and that might be true, but even a drunk like Lemy Loud knew that sometimes, what you want and what you need are two totally different things. His kids wanted to have him but they needed to not have him.

That dark realization followed him for the rest of the evening, wearing at his heart like cancer and gnawing the lining of his stomach. At dinner, Meagan sat on one side of him and Lucas on the other, Luya across and slightly down, next to her grandmother. There was something different about her, she seemed...wrung out, the sullen energy that had characterized her actions for the past two days gone and replaced by cold apathy. She was the one he hurt the most, and before he left, he was going to sit her down and tell her everything...everything about him, and everything about her. At least everything he knew.

Something tugged on his sleeve and he looked down at Meagan; two French fries were shoved under her upper lip, giving her the appearance of having fangs. Lemy blinked, his blurry vision swimming into focus. "Bet'cha didn't think pirates could be vampires too," she stated.

It was silly and cute...and it hurt him so bad he almost cried. "No," he muttered, "I thought they were…" he trailed off as he searched his addled brain for the right word. "Mutually exclusive."

"Nope," she chirped and turned back to her plate. She took the fries out, held one in her fist, and tore a bite off the end like it was a stick of beef jerky. "Everyone can be vampire. All it takes it a little grunting and straining."

At the head of the table, Dad snorted. "Is that all?" he asked.

Lemy caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye, and turned his head. Luya stared at him with open hatred, her eyes narrow and her lips arranged in a grimace. His heart crushed and he looked away...only to find Leia looking at him with almost the same expression, hers trending more toward disgust.

"...really. I read it in a book." Meagan stopped and thought for a second. "Or maybe it was a TV show. I can't really remember. It was really cool, though."

Leia looked down at her plate and went back to eating, but Luya kept glaring, and Lemy swallowed nervously. The air was suddenly too hot and stifling, and the walls seemed a little closer than they should have been, looming, ominous, threatening.

Without a word, he got to his feet, took his plate into the kitchen, then fled up the stairs, the gazes of everyone at the table hot on his back. In the bathroom, he locked the door, crossed to the toilet, closed the lid, then sat. His hands trembled as he took the bottle out of his coat, unscrewed the cap, and drank. His mind sank even farther into the shadows and he tried to think, but it took too much effort.

He twisted the cap back on, got up, and swayed toward the door. He was feeling drunk now and he needed to sober up a little - it was his last night with his kids and he was going to enjoy it come hell or high water.

Stipping naked, he got in the shower and turned the water as hot as it could go, hissing in pain as it blistered his skin; it did not burn away the fog in his mind, though. He cut the temp, turned around, and leaned forehead first against the slick wall, his chest rising and falling as he fought to catch his breath. The room was starting to twist back and forth and his stomach gurgled sickly. He swallowed hard and turned, letting the water pound against his chest. He had to get his kids...hang out with them, something, he didn't know, his mind was murky like a river heavy with silt.

He cut the spray, grabbed a towel from the hook, and dried himself off; his skin was flushed from head to toe and his head ached. He felt like he was going to be sick, and as he pulled his jeans on, he fell back against the sink and almost went to the floor. He cackled mad laughter because it was funny, then he surprised himself by starting to cry, his hand going to face and his shoulders shaking. He ruined it. He ruined everything just like he always ruined it. Everything he saw, everything he liked, everything he loved, he turned to shit, good old King Lemy with the magic touch.

Getting ahold of himself, he stooped down, grabbed the bottle from his jacket, and took a drink, stopping when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: Red eyes, head thrown back, Captain Morgan tilted to his lips, sucking like a fat, greedy baby at its bottle. Self-loathing shot through him like bitter wine, and he drank even more to forget. He pulled it away from his lips, sat it on the sinktop with a clink, and fought to get the cap back on, his hands shaking and his body swaying like a weeble wobble. When he got it, he bent at the waist to return it to the coat, but toppled forward and crashed headfirst into the floor, red, cracking pain bursting in the center of his skull.

Too bad it didn't kill me, he thought with a humorless chuckle. He pushed shakily to his feet, pulled his shirt on, and sat heavily on the closed toilet lid. His socks were hard, crusty, and stank, but he didn't care. His shoes were ratty and the soles covered in holes, but it didn't matter. Metaphor for his life, he thought and stood. He grimaced and shrugged into his jacket, then took the bottle out and stole another drink.

In the hall, he shambled to Leia's room; the door was slightly ajar, and the lamp cast a bar of light across the bed. He sat, propped his elbows on his knees, and held his throbbing head in his hands. He wanted to curl up and go to sleep, but couldn't. He still needed to talk to Luya. And tell her he was sorry.

Getting to his feet, he rocked from side to side and nearly fell, throwing an arm back and catching himself on the bed. He spotted something on the nightstand and furrowed his brows. It came into focus - that thing Lucas and Meagan made him. A fond smile touched his lips and affection filled his chest. They were good kids.

Which is why he had to leave before he turned them into shit like he turned everything else into shit...like he turned Luya into shit.

His smile fell into a frown, and he went downstairs, intent on talking to her. He froze on the fifth step from the bottom when he saw Lupa; she stood by the front door with her arms crossed uncomfortably over her chest, clad in rumpled blue scrubs and white tennis shoes. Confusion came over him; he knew there was there way in hell it was the end of her shift. She must have gotten off early.

She felt his eyes on her and turned her head, then hurriedly away. He got the feeling she would try to avoid him, and you know what? He didn't care. Fuck her.

Ignoring her, he went down the rest of the stairs and rounded the newel post. Dad, Meagan, Lucas, and Lori sat on the couch in front of a cartoon while Lola sat in the armchair. Lana sat on the coffee table next to Lucy, and Leni was perched on the arm next to Dad. Humph. Gang's all here.

Pack of fucking assholes.

Luya came out of the kitchen with a soda in her hand, took a drink, and sat it on the dining room table. She stopped when she saw him, and her face darkened, which made Lemy's heart skip a beat.

It was too late.

She was leaving.

For a moment, they stared at each other like two gunslingers at high noon, then Lupa's voice shattered the silence. "Come on," she said sharply.

Luya darted her eyes away from Lemy and started past, her shoulders hunched defensively. Watching her come, blearily studying the set of her jaw and the hardness in her eyes, he knew deep in his heart that it was too late. She would never forgive him.

Pain, rage, sadness, and self-loathing washed through him. He couldn't say or do anything to make it better - the time for that was past.

At this point, all he could do was hug her goodbye and wish her luck.

When she was within reach, he tried to draw her into an embrace, but she pulled away and shot out her hands; they connected with his chest and he stumbled back, his hip catching one corner of the table and his feet nearly tangling. "Don't touch me," she spat.

"Luya," Lupa admonished in a half-hearted.

"Leave me alone, stop talking to me, stop trying to touch me, stop thinking about me." Luya said, her voice lowering to a menacing growl that sent icy blades of pain through Lemy's stomach. "Go away. You're a drunk and a piece of shit."

Lemy winced, and Dad barked her name from the couch.

She ignored him, her glinting, hate-filled eyes zeroed in on Lemy like two laser-guided missiles. An unexpected emotion welled suddenly up from the depths of Lemy's drunken haze: Anger. He got it, okay? He fucked up. Did she really have to not even let him hug her? He tried every which way but loose with this fucking girl. He begged her, he apologized, he tried to make friends with her, but she rejected him every step of the way. "I really wish you'd get over yourself," Lemy blurted. He realized even as those words left his mouth that they were the final nails in the coffin, but he couldn't stop himself.

Luya's lips pulled back from her teeth and her eyes flashed black and cold. "I really wish you weren't my father."

Lemy spoke before he could stop himself. "I'm not your father."

Luya flinched, and perverse satisfaction filled him when the smug expression drained from her face.

The air sucked out of the room and everyone stared at him, but he didn't notice, wouldn't have cared if he had. It felt good to get that out, good to admit that she wasn't his...and that ultimately he owed her nothing. "Your mother was a fucking prostitute. You could belong to anyone."

Luya's jaw dropped into a stupid expression of shock that, for some reason, pissed Lemy off all the more. He wanted to destroy her, blot her out from existence, to forget her and maybe, just maybe, to forget his own guilt and shame. "You never had a father," he slurred, then leaned in, her eyes widening, "and you never will."

For a moment she gaped at him, then tears filled her big, dark eyes; she whipped away and fled through the living room, her hands covering her face and her sobs trailing behind her. He followed her with his eyes, watched her slam through the door. Lupa stood there in horror, then gave him the nastiest look he'd ever seen...nasty enough to penetrate the mist in his brain. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a single tear beading down her cheek. "You son of a bitch," she said tightly. Before he could reply, she turned and went out the door, slamming it behind her. For a second, no one moved, then Lucy got up and hurried after.

Lemy blinked and swayed. Good fucking riddance. When Lupa got pregnant and had no one, he stepped up and helped her out...he adopted her daughter as his own and tried to be a good father to her, but neither one of them appreciated it. None of his family appreciated anything he did.

Shaking his head, he realized that everyone was staring at him, their expressions ranging from shock to disgust. Dad's face was pinched in something approaching loathing, and Meagan looked at him with wounded eyes...almost like it was her he went off on.

That's when it occurred to him that maybe he went a little too far.

He needed a drink and he didn't care who knew it. He took the bottle out, twisted off the cap, and lifted it to his lips. No one spoke, no one moved; they only tracked him with their eyes as he made his way to the stairs, the knowledge of what he'd done beginning to sink in and panic closing around his heart and lungs like a cold fist. He fucked up.

Again.

And this time, something told him there was no going back.


	10. Point of No Return

Luya sat in the passenger seat of her mother's car, her arms wrapped protectively around her chest and her wet eyes pointed directly ahead. The atmosphere was tense and silent between them; neither spoke on the long ride home. Mom smoked endlessly, and in the flickering illumination of passing headlights, her face was wan and drawn, her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes pooled with darkness. Her father's words echoed through her head, and when she remembered the detestation on his face, fresh tears welled in her eyes.

When they pulled into the driveway, Mom killed the engine, neither moving to get out. Luya wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and looked at her mother's sharp profile; her hands clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled death grip and her throat worked furiously as though she were trying to form words but struggling.

Taking a deep, shuddery breath, Luya turned to the dashboard, away from the sight of her mother. "Is it true?" she asked, hating how small and fragile her voice sounded. Desperation clawed at her and she found herself hoping Mom would tell her that it wasn't.

Instead, she sighed, and when she spoke, her voice was a washed out whisper. "Yes," she said, and for some reason Luya couldn't name, her stomach clutched and her heart ached. "He's not your father."

Every time she'd ever called him Daddy or Dad, every time she ever crawled into his lap or asked him to read her a bedtime story, and every time he turned his back on her after Mom kicked him out came back to her in a flash, and she felt so stupid. It was a lie, and she had no fucking clue. She wasn't his daughter, she was…

She was nothing to him.

No wonder he treated her the way he did, no wonder he stopped coming around and hid when she went over to his trailer. She saw herself at ten, walking through lumpy yards between single-wides, ducking under clotheslines and sidestepping meter boxes, happy and hopeful because she was going to see her Dad, and him seeing her out the window. Here comes that pitiful little girl again. She thinks I'm her father. LMAO!

Her cheeks burned in shame and she blinked her eyes. I really wish you weren't my father she said, but she was wrong; she wished he was and she wished he loved her.

Suddenly, she wished she hadn't said anything, that she accepted him and fell for the lies, because him walking out again wouldn't have hurt nearly as bad as finding out her whole life was a lie. She was such a fuck-up; if she just went with it, she wouldn't be here now, and if she'd been a better daughter, proved to him that she deserved to be loved like she was his own, things would be different. They would have to be.

"Were you a prostitute?" she asked, her voice breaking.

"Yes, Luya, I was a prostitute, okay?" Mom asked impatiently, and Luya squeezed her eyes closed against a crop of tears not because of the admission, but because of her mother's tone - like she was talking to a burden and a mistake, not her child. "I didn't have shit, I was on heroin, your grandfather kicked me out long before he kicked Lemy out, I was sleeping on the street, and I…" she trailed off, the fire draining from her voice and her head bowing a little over the wheel. "I hooked. I didn't like it but I needed the money."

Luya stared down at her lap and tried to process this new and hurtful information, but couldn't; she was suddenly exhausted, and all she wanted to do was climb into bed and sleep until she forgot all about her fake father and hooker mother. She started to ask if Mom really didn't know who her father was, but realized she didn't give a shit. He wouldn't want her either - he probably already had a family, kids he loved and spent time with, just like her f...Lemy...had Meagan and Lucas.

And that was fine.

She didn't want him either.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, she got out and went inside, not turning on any lights as she went to her room; the floor creaked under her feet and the stench of mold and mildew pinched her nose. Mice thumped in the walls, and her door rattled loosely as she went in. At the edge of her bed, she kicked her shoes off and dropped on, her face burrowing protectively in the unwashed pillow and her arms hugging her chest.

Her mind turned to the kitchen knife shoved between the mattress and the box spring. She took it from the drawer a few months ago when she felt suicidal and sat with the blade pressed against her wrist for an hour before chickening out.

Could she do it this time?

She didn't like to hurt...she didn't want to hurt...and she didn't want to cut her wrists, but she didn't want to feel like this anymore. She wanted it to be over, everything from the big stuff like Mom and D...Lemy...to the small stuff like never having clean laundry. She hated it all, and the little things were just as bad as the big things; it's like getting burned in a house fire, then having a lighter held to the wound. You're already in pain, and that teensy weensy spark, so inconsequential on its own, makes it so much worse.

Rolling onto her side and sniffing wetly, she reached over the edge, slipped her fingers between, and brushed them back and forth until she felt the handle. She closed them around and pulled it out like a sword from a sheath. A stray beam of moonlight fell through the window and glinted coldly on the edge; Luya's heartbeat sped up and her stomach twisted sickly. Even so, she jutted her left arm out over the edge, tightened her grip on the handle, and reached until chilly steel lay across her skin. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. It would hurt, but only for a little while, she told herself. After that, it would all go away, and nothing else could ever bother her again, no more tiny flames licking her third degree burns, no more anything, just...blackness.

That thought greatly appealed to her.

But it also scared her so badly she shook.

She swallowed around a lump in her throat and blinked her tearful eyes. It would only hurt for a little while, she told herself again as she bit the serrated metal into her flesh; stinging pain streaked up her arm and she clamped her bottom lip between her teeth. All she had to do now was flick her wrist; one quick jerk and she would be okay.

She couldn't do it, though; she was weak and afraid.

Trembling, she took the knife away from her wrist in defeat and laid it on the pillow next to her, then gazed into the darkness, her mind blank and her eyes drying. At some point, sleep stole over her, and in her slumber, she laid her palm on the knife like a little girl snuggling with a teddy bear to ward away the monsters.

And like that, Luya Loud passed the night.

***

Leia found Lemy sitting on the edge of her bed, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed in a posture of abject misery. In the faint glow of the bedside lamp, his features were dark and sharp, pooled with shadows, and his eyes puddles of rheumy inebriation. Her gaze went to the bottle in his hand even as he threw his head back and brought it to his lips, and a bomb blast of searing rage detonated in her chest.

When she was a little girl, she fell in love with Lemy. She didn't know when exactly and she didn't know why, but she did, and from the time she was eleven-years-old, she wanted a family with him. She wanted other things...lots of other things, in fact, but while those things changed as she grew and changed herself, her desire to be Lemy's wife did not; no matter if she looked ahead at twelve or fifteen or eighteen, she always saw Lemy. One day they might be living in California with her as a famous movie star, beloved by millions, and the next they might be in Paris, but no matter the background she imagined, no matter her occupation, it was always they and never her.

Then he fucking ruined it with his drinking.

She ground her teeth together as she watched him guzzling that awful shit like it was water, as though it were nourishing him instead of slowly killing him and everything around him. Once upon a time, she looked at him and saw potential. He was smart, witty, and with a little hard work, he could have been something; they could own a home right now and make good money, they could have a pool for Meagan to play in and go to PTA meetings and work in their rose garden on the weekends. Instead, she lived with her parents and worked a dead end job because he held her back. He was a fundamentally lazy and selfish person, and though she tried so fucking hard over the years to whip him into shape, like a drill sergeant, he kept fucking up, and she was stupid enough to stay with him, to keep taking him back, to sneak out of the house and see him when everyone else turned their backs. She was stupid enough to let him drag her down with him, and their daughter too.

Her hands balled into tight fists and her eyes burned red with hatred.

I know how you feel about him, Dad told her once. But you have to stop. He's not doing you or Meagan any favors; he's hurting both of you. She remembered that conversation so clearly that she might as well have been watching it happen again in front of her. It was early morning, feeble light streaming through the window over the sink, and she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her and her phone in her hand. Lemy was texting her about coming to see him, and Dad, being the nosy bastard he was, saw over her shoulder. You need to worry about your daughter, Leia; Lemy's an adult and he's made his choices. Meagan's a child and she didn't choose any of this.

Leia nodded, said "Umhm" and then completely blew off his advice.

Like a fucking moron.

She should have listened to him, but she listened to her heart instead, and her heart lead her astray, just like it always had. She loved Lemy in the way a starry-eyed little girl loved the teen heartthrob on her bedroom wall, she loved him with everything she had, which is why she wasted her life trying to turn him around. She wouldn't have bothered if she didn't care; she'd have kicked him away like a piece of garbage, like everyone else did.

Like he deserved to be.

Ditching his sorry, no good ass would have been the smart thing to do, but apparently she was a fool.

Guzzle. Guzzle. Amber liquid sloshed down his throat with an obscene gurgling sound, like a life, and a love, swirling down the drain.

This was his chance to change, to break with the past and become the man she and Meagan needed, but he smashed it against the floor and gleefully danced on its broken shards like Snoopy in a Peanuts strip.

And the stupid fucker probably didn't even realize it. He'd wake up tomorrow morning and huh? Why is everyone mad at me?

She wasn't here for what he did to Luya, but Meagan told her all about it, and coupled with him being drunk like this, there was no way in hell Dad would let him stay. He was going to make him leave, and it was all his fault.

Breaking, she stalked over and slapped the bottle out of his hand; it hit the wall with a thunk and fell to the carpet. Lemy looked up at her in confusion, and the dumb, hazy, faraway look in his eyes fueled her anger like gasoline to fire. Baring her teeth, she drew back her hand and smacked him in the head, then with the other. "You fucking bastard," she hissed, slapping him harder, looking for all the world like a grotesque parody of a woman playing the bongos. Lemy threw up his arms to protect himself and fell back, but saved himself, a wordless series of drunken grunts bursting from his throat and enraging Leia even more. "Stupid fucking prick," she growled, punctuating each word with a slap.

Coming alive, he pushed her back, and she stumbled, her nostrils flaring and her clear eyes wide with frenzied madness. "Fuck is your problem?" he slurred, his voice thick with intoxication.

The sound of it went through Leia like broken glass, and she bent forward, her delicate face red with fury. "You," she said and jabbed her finger at him, "you've always been my problem. Every fucking thing that's ever gone wrong in my life is your fault. You. You ruined everything. You piece of shit, no good son of a bitch, fucking wino. Look at you, so drunk you can barely sit up." Her lips twisted in sour disdain. Lemy swayed from side to side like a palm in a hurricane. A dark shadow ran across his face, and his jaw clenched.

That only pissed her off more. How dare he get angry. How fucking dare he feel even the slightest hint of righteous indignation after all he'd done over the years. How many times did he drink up his paycheck and leave her to pay the bills alone? How many times did the power get cut off because she couldn't do it on her own? How many nights did she lay awake in bed waiting for him to come home, only for him to stumble through the door at four in the morning, so drunk he crashed into everything and sang at the top of his lungs, waking Meagan up and scaring her? Too many for him to look at her like he was a poor-pity-me victim and she some kind of monster.

"Leave me alone," he grumbled, "I'm not in the mood."

"I'm not in the mood for this," she said gestured wildly with his hands, "but I got it anyway. You had one chance to come back and be a man but you blew it just like you blow everything. You fucking loser. I hate your guts." Tears filled her eyes and she didn't know if they were of anger, sadness, or both.

Lemy brows lowered and his lips peeled away from his teeth. "Fuck you, bitch," he said. "You -"

"I hope you die."

"YOU act like you never did anything wrong," he said, raising his voice. "You treated me like shit our WHOLE time together."

Leia couldn't have stopped the retort even if she wanted to. "Because you are shit. Being with you was like having another fucking child. You said you wanted to be a father, but you can't even take care of yourself. You're dirty, you stink, you're a fucking bum and I wish you never came back."

Lemy started to get up, and acting on instinct, Leia snatched a bottle of nail polish from her dresser and flung it at him; it hit his shoulder, and his butt dropped back to the bed. Savage satisfaction filled her; she grabbed a bottle of perfume and threw that too. It hit his chest and he flailed his arms. "Get out of my room, you fucking retard. Get out of my life."

"FUCK YOU!" he screamed.

She grabbed a compact and threw it, missing and hitting the wall. He looked around for something to throw back.

"M-Mom?"

Neither saw Meagan in the doorway, her face pale and slack with fear and her hands balled against her chest.

"I HATE YOU!" Leia shrieked. "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"

Lemy spotted something on the nightstand, a piece of wood glued to a rock. He leaned over, picked it up, and threw it; it sailed past Leia and smashed against the closet door, breaking into two pieces and landing on the floor.

Flashing, Leia threw herself at him, pulling back her hands and battering his head with a flurry of slaps.

"Mom!"

WIth a wordless cry, Lemy grabbed her by the front of her blouse and shoved back with all his might; she lost her balance and fell hard on her ass, the breath leaving her lungs in a rush. He got to his feet and staggered toward the door; Meagan's heart burst in terror, and in that moment, she was sure he was coming for her next. She drew sharply away from the door, and her father came out, her mother hot on his heels, her normally pretty face contorted in hatred. She slapped the back of his head and his shoulders, driving him forward; he almost fell, but shot out his arms and splayed his hands on the wall. A high-pitched stream of obscenities spewed from her mother's mouth like noxious gas. "You fucking motherfucker cocksuckerbastardnodickhavingbitch!"

Lemy snapped. Spinning, he grabbed her throat in both hands and squeezed, his eyes three times their normal size and his teeth bared. "GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME!" he shouted, his voice filling the house like thunder. Leia's cheeks puffed out and her eyes bulged from their sockets. She slapped him with both hands, and he slammed the back of her head against the doorframe, a moan of pain knocking from her throat.

Meagan started to cry.

Leia lashed out and kicked Lemy in the shin, her nails raking across his forehead and drawing blood.

Suddenly Lincoln was there, yelling and prying them apart. "Let go!" he roared and slammed his fist into Lemy's chest. Lemy's hands released and he staggered back a step; Leia sucked a lungful of burning air and started toward him. "Bastard."

She cried out when Dad arced shoved her back. "GET IN YOUR FUCKING ROOM!" He turned on Lemy and pointed toward the stairwell. "GO DOWNSTAIRS!"

For the first time, Leia became aware of her daughter's sobbing, and her heart clutched. She looked around and saw her by the bathroom, Mom on her knees and holding her, one hand stroking comfortingly up and down the little girls arm. Meagan's head was bowed, her teeth clamping her lower lip and big, fat tears streaming down her red face.

"She started it," Lemy slurred.

"GO DOWNSTAIRS!"

Lemy looked him up and down with a sneer, then he did as he was told, his steps lumbering and uneven. "This fucking place is stupid," he threw over his shoulder, his voice cracking and garbled, the words sounding as though they came hard.

When he was gone, Dad turned to her, and the tight expression on his face told her she was in deep shit. "Go in your room," he said, tasting the words as though they were foul.

He glanced at Meagan; Mom held her from behind now and whispered into her ear, her fingers running through her granddaughter's hair. A shiver ran through Meagan's body, and her chest started to rapidly rise and fall, a breathless wheeze bursting from her throat. Mom's face scrunched in worry, and she looked up. "She's having an asthma attack," Mom said, the words coming out in a fearful rush. Leia's heart sank and she started for the inhaler in Meagan's room, but Lucas appeared from seemingly nowhere and handed it to her mother. Mom took it and gave it to Meagan, who held it to her lips and drew a deep breath.

Dad turned to her, and the wrath in his eyes made her falter.

"I'm s -"

"Go. In. Your. Room." He pronounced each word slowly and with a menace that stirred fear in her stomach.

Nodding and casting one final, longing look at her daughter, she went into her room and closed the door. She was crying before she even reached the bed, and she didn't stop for a long, long time.


	11. Alone With The Wind

Lyrics to Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve (1997)

Lemy came slowly and groggily awake, his mind swimming up from the depths and consciousness creeping into his brain like the spreading rays of the morning sun. The first thing he was aware of was the sick, nauseous rolling in his stomach. Next was the hot, throbbing pain in the center of his skull. Third was the awful taste in his mouth, like ass and vomit mixed together and warmed in the microwave.

He winced and and stirred, a hiss of pain escaping his lips at the stiffness in his neck. Clear, white brilliance colored his eyelids and he tried to flee back into the recesses of sleep, but something loomed from the shadows, something big and insistent, a cresting revelation that he somehow knew he had to scurry from, like a sinner away from God's vengeance. It began to take form, and his heartbeat sped up. No, he thought in drawing horror. No.

A memory broke from the shadows. Luya's face twisting in shock and pain. I'm not your father.

He didn't do that. Couldn't have done that. Jesus fucking God, tell him he didn't do that to her! It was a dream, that's all.

Only he knew it wasn't - more details rose from the mire, details too fine to be had in any dream: The anger he felt, the hurt, the sense of rejection, the self-hatred because that girl needed a father just as badly as his own daughter, and he made it a point to be that father...only to bomb so fucking hard it made Hiroshima look like a firecracker in a tin can. The night Lupa told him she was pregnant, they were sitting on the back porch under the stars and sharing a cigarette because nether could afford their own pack, so they pooled their money and bought one. It was November, the night was frosty, and their breath puffed in front of them in a ghost-like mist. They weren't together, but they had sex occasionally, and Lemy cared for her as deeply as a man can for a woman.

I don't know who it is, she said, a single tear sliding down her cheek. She lifted the cigarette to her lips, sucked, and blew out a jagged plume of smoke. And it doesn't matter. I-I can't have a baby. I can't even have myself. She laughed mirthlessly and shook her head.

What are you going to do? He asked.

She didn't reply for a long time. Have an abortion, I guess.

Lemy's heart sank. God, no, don't do that, he said quickly.

What am I gonna do then? I'm a fucking hooker and I live in a motel room. What kind of life can I give this baby? It doesn't even have a father.

Lemy took the cigarette and drew a long drag as he thought. Yes it does, he finally said, and Lupa looked at him funny. It has me.

She rolled her eyes. Lemy, you're not -

Yes I am, he said firmly. He closed his hand over hers and squeezed, his thumb brushing hers. And I'll always be its father.

Only that was a lie. When Lupa broke up with him years later, he stopped being Luya's father. She isn't mine, he told Lupa once over the phone, she's yours, you worry about her. For years, he and Leia lived two streets over from her in the same trailer park, and he went out of his way to avoid seeing her. When she came over, he'd pretend he wasn't there - he clearly remembered one time she kept knocking and knocking and knocking, and he sat there staring at the wall and taking pulls from a bottle of Jack. I'm not your daddy, go away.

Maybe he was young and cruel, maybe it was the stress of his life, but he it wasn't until years later that he realized how awful that was, how fucking terrible. He was there from the moment she was born to her first year in school, he held her and kissed her goodnight and slept with her when she was afraid of monsters under the bed, and when he came home from work, her eyes lit up and a smile crossed her face. Hi, Daddy!

That made him her father.

He didn't see it that way until it was too late.

And now…

Groaning at the soreness radiating from his every joint, he sat up and pressed one shaky hand to his fevered forehead, the couch sighing wearily under his weight. Dizziness overcame him, and he felt like he was going to be sick.

Another memory bubbled up, and his blood turned cold.

His hands wrapping around Leia's soft throat, her eyes straining from her head and her lips mushing together. They were fighting, he thought, and...she hit him or threw something at him, and he responded by…

Bile rose in the back of his throat and he swallowed it down.

In all the years he'd been with Leia, and in all the fights they had, he never once put his hands on her, not once. Last night, though, he did, he closed them around her neck and slammed her head against the wall, the soft, pained gasp tearing from her throat like blood in the snout of a shark. I'll fucking show her, he thought, I'll show her two can play at that game, she can hit me, well, I can hit her too.

That was true...if a woman can hit a man, a man can hit back...but he didn't want to hit her, even when he did. She was a nag and a bitch and a hypocrite and a whole lot of other things, but he loved her, and the thought of hurting her made him sick to his stomach. During their worst arguments, when he really wanted to do it, he stopped, looked at her face, and imagined it covered in black bruises, her wounded eyes swollen shut and her lips split; the wrath always drained from him and he backed down.

He couldn't do that to her.

He couldn't break something so precious and ethereal.

Last night, though, he didn't give it a second thought, and as he remembered more of the fight, he was horrified to find himself thinking she deserved it. He was disgusted by his lack of disgust. She hit him so much over the years that it was about damn time she got a taste of her own medicine.

Meagan's hysterical, hitching sobs came back to him then, and maybe it was a false memory, but didn't she look at him as he staggered away, her eyes filled with fright and confusion? She watched her father strangle her mother. Lemy let that sink in for a moment, imagined the terror she must have felt, and tears filled his eyes.

You blew it, Leia said, and she was right. He really fucking blew it, blew it so spectacularly that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to put the pieces back together again.

He buried his face in his hands and fought back the urge to cry. He didn't deserve to cry; this was all his fault. He saw that now like a man seeing his sins on his deathbed, the veil of the past torn asunder by an angel of wrath. He was wrong about one thing, though. He thought once that he was the same as he had always been, but he wasn't. He did, in fact, change.

For the worst.

"Lemy."

His name, sharp and bitter. His heart skipped a beat and he looked over his shoulder. Dad stood at the bottom of the stairs in a white polo shirt tucked into black pants, his face set in stone, the creases of age seeming wider than they were before, darker...and more plentiful.

Without another word, Dad turned and went into his office, leaving Lemy alone. I wish you were dead, Leia said. I wish you weren't my father, Luya told him. Meagan watched him with fear and revulsion.

I wish you never came back….get out of my life.

Getting unsteadily to his feet, Lemy went around the couch and into his father's office. Dad sat at the desk, his posture tense and his face hard. Lemy's eyes darted to the sheet of paper, and his heart skipped a beat. Sometimes, someone once told him, doing the right thing feels wrong, and as he crossed to the desk, the sense of wrongness was so strong it made him dizzy.

Dad didn't meet his eyes; he picked up a pen and slapped it onto the form, his expression strained. Lemy swallowed and looked down it, making out the word ADOPTION. He hesitated, but the memory of Meagan's tears, and the knowledge that he couldn't promise he wouldn't do the same thing to Leia again, decided him.

Bending, he picked up the pen, found the line with FATHER'S SIGNATURE underneath, and touched the tip to the page, his hand shaking. Dad stared off into space, crazily reminding Lemy of an English palace guard.

This was it.

Pursing his lips, Lemy signed his name and sat the pen down. Dad glanced at it then away. "You can leave now," he said, and it was clear that he didn't mean the office.

Lemy nodded, his vision starting to blur. "Can I see my kids before I go?" he asked, his voice breaking with desperation.

"No," Dad said, "you've done enough damage already. Just go."

For a moment Lemy stood where he was, head hung and shoulders slumped, then he muttered a weak, "Okay." He turned around and walked out, his gaze downcast. He looked up, and Lori stood at the top of the stairs, her arms crossed and a stern expression on her face. Lemy sighed, looked back down at his feet, and went to the front door.

Everyone always said he was self-centered, and they were right, but not this time. He would leave quietly and without protest. His children would miss him for a while, but they'd get over it and one day, they'd have happy lives and kids of their own.

Just so long as he didn't fuck them up the way he fucked everything else up.

He thought of Luya, and regret squeezed his chest in a vise grip. It was probably too late for her...for five years, maybe six, he'd been hurting her nonstop. At least Meagan and Lucas had a fighting chance.

At the door, he turned the knob and opened it, a cold gust of wind washing over his face and plastering his sweaty hair to his forehead. His father spoke behind him, and he turned; water stood in Dad's eyes, but his face was unmoving as marble, his mind made up now and forever more. He held something out and dropped it into Lemy's palm; a smooth stone covered in multicolored stripes, splintery bits of wood stuck to dried glue on its face. Meagan's present. The one he broke.

Lemy closed his hand around it.

Dad held something else out.

Two one hundred dollar bills fluttered in the wind.

Lemy started to tell him to keep them, but took them and shoved them into his pocket instead, a blush of shame creeping across his cheeks.

"Please don't come back," Dad said, and something like pain seemed to flicker across his features.

Then he shut the door in Lemy's face.

***

Luya sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest and her eyes puddled with tears she couldn't stop no matter how hard she tried. She felt stupid and melodramatic, but she couldn't help that either. She woke early that morning from a nightmare she couldn't remember, voices echoing through her head like peals of distant thunder. She lay awake for a long time staring at the water splotched ceiling before it started coming back to her, resolving like an image from the shadows. Her father, or the man she thought was her father, looming over her, his face twisted in hatred. He yelled and her heart caved in on itself - she didn't know what she did, but she made him stop loving her, stop even tolerating her, something that went back further than the previous night, some transgression that she could not name.

Sitting up now and staring blankly at the dark TV screen, Luya knew vaguely that she did nothing wrong - she wasn't his daughter, so why would he treat her like she was? It was simple...a little sad, but simple nonetheless. In her heart, however, like a malignant tumor, she wondered if he might not feel differently if she tried harder. If her own mother would feel differently.

She took a deep, watery breath and let it out in a jagged rush. In the light of day, everything was clear to her, clearer than it had ever been before, and her false father was the least of her pain, the least of the fires licking her already burn-scorched heart. She thought of her grandmother - always flat, emotionless, her tone never rising or falling and her face never twitching in the slightest display of feeling.

Did she hate her too? Was she embarrassed by her the way Mom was? Did she think she was a mistake too? Grandma rarely hugged her, rarely kissed her. That's how she was, everyone said, but knowing what she knew now, she wondered.

On some level, Luya always suspected that she was unwanted, that she was only here because her father didn't pull out, or the condom broke, but she could deal with that. A lot of people owe their existence to an accident. But with the dreadful circumstances sharp in her mind, she understood just what a blunder she really was. At least thinking Lemy was her father, she could console herself with the fact that her parents were together and loved each other, but now she didn't even have that; her mother didn't want her, didn't even want the sex that produced her...she just wanted to make a little money and get high.

Tears welled and blurred her vision. She wiped them away with her shirtsleeve and sighed. Moping around wasn't going to help anything. Her mother always told her to suck it up, and that's what she was going to do. Being a sullen drama queen annoyed Mom, and she was surprised to find that she didn't want to annoy her.

She wanted to make her happy.

Not that she ever could. How could she when her very existence was an inconvenience?

Her mind turned to the knife under her mattress. She couldn't...she wasn't brave enough to cut herself open and face death. She didn't want to die, she wanted to be happy, like Meagan. Every time Luya saw her, she was smiling and bouncy like she didn't have a care in the world; she rolled her eyes at it, but she wanted the same thing for herself.

She hugged her legs tight and rested the side of her wet face against her knee, her dark, pain-filled eyes pointed sightlessly at the door. It didn't close all the way; it hung wrong in the frame. She was sure there was a metaphor to be had there, but she didn't care to find it, didn't care to do anything but sit here and be alone, like a caterpillar in its chrysalis. One day she was going to come out and be something else...a butterfly, she hoped, light and happy and free, flitting through the warm spring air, its growing pains forgotten as it danced among the flowers. That image was nice, and she wished for it to be so. She wasn't sure it ever would be, though. She wasn't sure of anything anymore; she was fraught, overwhelmed, and just wanted to be loved. Was that so much to ask? To just know that one person really and truly cared about her? She neither needed nor wanted to be coddled or doted upon, just...to know. That's all.

Just to know.

Presently, the door opened and her mother came in; she wore pink scrubs and looked tired, her face sunken and dark bags under her eyes. Luya could never remember her smiling, couldn't recall her eyes twinkling with light. She was dull, glum, and dead.

Now she knew why.

"We gotta go," she mumbled.

Her nightmare came back to her, and her heart skipped a staggering beat. She couldn't go back there and face...him...not after yesterday, not knowing how stupid she acted over the years. She swallowed around a lump in her throat and lifted her head, her eyes wide with alarm. "I don't want to," she said, "please don't make me."

Mom sighed heavily. "Are you really gonna do this? I do not have the patience right now, not after what happened last night."

"I know," Luya said, her voice a breaking whisper. She turned her gaze to her knees and sniffed; her lips were starting to quiver and tears filled her eyes.

Mom opened her mouth to continue, but her features softened a little. She sighed again and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folding in her lap. "I'm sorry he did that to you," she said. "I didn't want you to ever find out, I wanted...I wanted you to have a good father, and a long time ago, Lemy was a good man. He told me he would always be your father and I believed him." She looked down at her hands.

"I understand," Luya said. She felt herself starting to break and tried to stop it, but couldn't. "And I know why you don't love me now."

All of the pain, bitterness, self-loathing, sorrow, and regret came out in a rush; she buried her face in her knees and gave into the sobs, her eyes squeezing shut and her mouth twisting in a parted-lip grimace.

A look of shock flickered across Lupa's features, and her jaw went slack. The kneen, sou-tearing sound of her daughter's ripped through her heart like a thousand blades and made her blink. Luya hugged herself and trembled with the power of her lament, her shoulders shaking and her back rapidly rising and falling.

Did she really think that?

That she didn't love her?

Lupa's paralysis broke and she reached out her hand. "Luya, I…" her words cut off as she remembered all the times she'd been impatient with her, all the days she looked at her and wished Lemy took her with him, all the fights they had because she was tired and Luya was acting like a brat. Looking at her daughter now, hunched in misery and hitching desperate, broken sobs, it occured to Lupa that she rarely even hugged her. Her stomach clutched and her own tears sprang to her eyes.

She didn't mean it. She did love Luya, she just...she was too caught up in her own problems to show it, to realize that a child needs love and affection the way a flower needs water and sunlight.

In an instant, she knew just how badly she fumbled, and it was like being gutted. She snaked her arm around Luya's shoulder and drew her close; she resisted at first, but gave in and let herself be guided, her cheek pressing into Lupa's chest.

Lupa fought back the urge to cry as she stroked her fingers lovingly through her daughter's hair, soft whispers leaving her lips. Luya's tears soaked through the fabric of her uniform top and her tiny frame trembled against Lupa's breast. She had no idea she was hurting her daughter like that, and that she did made her hate herself more than anything else she'd ever done in her life.

"I'm sorry," she said and slipped a little, tears streaming down her face. She kissed Luya's fevered forehead and stroked her hair. "I'm so sorry, Luya. I didn't mean to."

Luya sniffled, her crying stilled, and Lupa held her closer, rocking her back and forth like she didn't when she was a baby. "I'm so sorry. I love you...I don't show it but I love you so much, honey."

"I love you too, Mom," Luya whispered, "I'm sorry for being such a terrible daughter."

"You're not," Lupa said and broke down. "You're not a terrible daughter."

Luya sniffled and took a deep breath. "Yes I am. I'll be better. I promise."

"No, I'll be better," Lupa vowed and hugged her closer.

Luya closed her eyes and let herself sink into her mother's warm embrace; she took Mom's hand in hers and threaded their fingers together, clutching desperately to the promise she made like a girl clinging to a life raft. Mom rocked her back and forth, stopping only to take out her phone and make a call. "Debbie, it's Lupa. I won't be in today." She hit END, tossed it aside, and went back to holding her.

Cause it's a bittersweet symphony this life  
Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to the money then you die.  
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down  
You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet,

Lemy stood on the platform, his shoulders stooped and his gaze locked firmly on the cracked pavement. His eyes were red and tears made wet trails on his face. It was cold and windy, the bleak sky a deep, leaden gray that threatened cold November rain, and dead brown leaves swirled against the breeze. The stench of diesel and exhaust fumes choked the crisp air, and a symphony of idling engines formed a rumbling cacophony that filled his ears but did little to drown out the demons in his head.

When a bus pulled up to the curb, his lifted his head. A big white 86 was painted over the accordian door. The ticket clutched in his hand bore the same number, only in bold, blaring black. He couldn't remember where the bus would take him, and he didn't care. It was all the same.

No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change,  
but I'm here in my mold, I am here in my mold.  
But I'm a million different people from one day to the next

Lemy stepped onto the bus and threw one final look over his shoulder, his eyes lingering on the station's brick facade, the main doors flanked by the ticket window on one side and a battered Coke machine on the other. This was the closest he'd ever come to seeing his children ever again, he realized.

Turning away with pursing lips, he handed the driver his ticket, then shuffled down the aisle, passing a gallery of apathetic faces, his steps heavy. He spotted a seat by the window and took it, his eyes staring beyond the grimey pane...at what could have been, at what may have been.

He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out the stone, its body a mishmash of colors. A melancholy smile touched his lips and he clutched it tight. He didn't have a picture of his daughter, but he had the memory of her giving it to him, and that would have to last him.

I can't change my mold, no, no, no, no

He slipped it back into his pocket, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a fresh bottle of Jack. He unscrewed the cap and took a long drink as the bus pulled away from the platform and began its journey to nowhere.

Well I never pray,  
But tonight I'm on my knees, yeah.  
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah.  
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now.  
But the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now.

Meagan sat on the top step of the back porch and hugged herself against the cold wind. Golden sunlight painted the dead grass a bright, heatless yellow and the branches of the tree knocked forlornly together, reminding her of skeletons.

Less than a week ago, she, Lucas, and her father played pirates in this very yard, and she was happier than she'd been in a long, long time. When her mother told her that her dad left all those years ago, she remembered being sad, but not like this, because this time...this time she was happy too.

The memory of watching him choke Mom and slam her head into the wall came back to her like a nasty rash, and her stomach twisted. She didn't tell Mom because she didn't want to sound like a baby, but she dreamed about it sometimes, and when she woke up, her heart slammed and a scream of terror burst in the confines of her throat. In the days since Dad left, she made it a point to be extra nice to Mom because she deserved it.

Even so...she wished he said goodbye.

The back door opened, and she looked over her shoulder as Luya came over, her eyes down and her lips arranged in a sad frown. She didn't come over much this week; her mom took a lot of time off work and they did things together or something. Meagan wasn't sure.

Luya sat next to her and rested her forearms on her knees, her face pointed straight ahead and inscrutable. Meagan felt a little nervous, and was thinking about getting up and going inside when her cousin spoke. "Do you miss him?"

The question caught her off-guard, and the earnest sobriety in her tone took her aback. Luya never talked to her unless it was to be mean. She considered her response, her brain telling her to lie but her heart wanting her to tell the truth. "Sometimes," she admitted, and was surprised when Luya didn't make fun of her or call her stupid but simply nodded sympathetically. "He was fun and...and I missed him. But you were right. He's selfish and he doesn't care about us."

Luya bowed her head slightly and sighed.

Meagan didn't mean to open up to the older girl, but she found herself doing it anyway, releasing all of the thoughts she'd been nursing since she woke up that day and found out he left again. "I love him but I don't think he loves me. I keep thinking about that dumb thing I gave him. Me and Lucas worked really hard on it and...and he threw it away like it didn't mean anything."

"Like you didn't mean anything?" Luya asked.

Tearing up, Meagan nodded. "Like he didn't even care." She hung her head and squeezed her eyes closed against the coming storm, winning but just barely.

When she felt Luya's arm around her, she stiffened and looked up at her. Luya flashed a wan smile, and in her eyes, Meagan saw gentle understanding. For a moment Meagan stared at her with uncertainty...then rested her head against her cousin's chest, seeking and finding the comfort that comes only with commiseration.

They sat that way as the sun sank behind the rim of the earth and twilight took its place, alone save for each other...and the wind.

No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change,  
But I'm here in my mold, I am here in my mold.  
And I'm a million different people from one day to the next  
I can't change my mold, no, no, no,

Lizy pulled on her pink uniform, ran her fingers through her tangled blonde hair, and then tied her waist apron around her hips. Grabbing her purse, she slung it over her shoulder, snapped the bedroom light off, and went downstairs, passing Leia on the steps. Their rooms were next door to one another, and on her days off, when she was actually home at night, she heard the muffled sound of her sister crying through the wall. Lizy naturally loved her, but she couldn't lie: She was a fucking retard for being hung up on Lemy the way she was. He was a no good piece of shit, and everyone saw that a long time ago except for her.

In the kitchen, she grabbed a mug from the cabinet over the sink and filled it with coffee from the pot. She was running late and didn't have time to sit and enjoy it; she'd have to drink it on the go, just like she did everything else. She turned, and her eyes fell on Lucas; he sat at the table, hunched over a sheet of paper and scribbling, an assortment of Crayons fanned out on his right, close enough for easy access but far enough away that he didn't bump into them. Love and pride welled up inside of her and she sighed in contentment. If one good thing ever came out of her brother, it was that little boy; he was going to be an artist one day, Lizy just knew it. He was already good...give it time and he'd be the best.

When Lemy left, she was worried it would affect Lucas, but unlike his aunt Leia, he came to terms and snapped back like a weed. It was almost like he never even met Lemy...which was just as well.

Taking a sip, she went over, gave the top of his head a hurried kiss, and mussed his hair. "Gotta go. Love you. And please be good for auntie Leni."

He looked up at her with an intensity far beyond his years. "I will, Mom," he said, "love you too." With that, he returned his attention to his work, and Lizy smiled. He got her last nerve sometimes, but he was a good kid...if only he wasn't so goddamn hyperactive.

Clutching the mug, she rushed out of the room, leaving Lucas alone with his drawing. He'd been working on it for a long time and he really wanted it to be good.

He picked up a brown Crayon and went back to it.

On the page: A painstaking and hyper-realistic depiction of his father.

Cause it's a bittersweet symphony this life.  
Trying to make ends meet, trying to find some money then you die.  
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down  
You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet,

Lincoln sat at his desk three weeks before Christmas, reading glasses perched on his nose and light snow falling outside the window. Before him was the certificate of adoption; it arrived that afternoon in the mail, and henceforth, he was officially the legal guardian of Luya, Lucas, and Meagan. In a way, it was a victory...but it didn't feel like one.

He looked up at the frosty pane and wondered, as he had a million times over the past month, where his son was...what he was doing...and if he was okay.

No matter how many times he told himself it was for the best, it hurt like hell, and even if he lived to be a thousand, he would never forget the hurt, stricken, scared, and lost expression on Lemy's face as he closed the door in it.

It was for the best, though. Not for Lemy...not for Leia...not even for him...but for the kids.

Even so, his mood was sour, and he stared down at the paper with a mixture of sadness and shame. He didn't hear the knocking, didn't know he wasn't alone until Leia's voice spoke, a cracking whisper. "Daddy?"

He looked up, and she stood at his left hand, her head hung and tears brimming in her clear eyes. She looked like a repentant little girl who'd committed an unforgivable sin, and the plainative way she spoke that single, uncharacteristic word - Daddy...

She reached one shaking hand out and laid something on the desk.

A pregnancy test.

And it was positive.

No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change,  
but I'm here in my mold, I am here in my mold.  
But I'm a million different people from one day to the next  
I can't change my mold, no, no, no,

Drops like sparkling diamonds slid down her cheeks, and she cast her eyes shamefully to her feet. Lincoln looked at the test...then away again.

"Okay," he said.

You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet, yeah.  
No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change,  
but I'm here in my mold, I am here in my mold.

December 2063, the far and monochrome future. Light, ashen snow fell from a churning gray sky and dusted the cracked pavement. Two Chicago PD officers in black coats and hats stood on the body of a vagrant in tattered clothes. His face was hidden behind a ratty gray beard and an empty bottle of rum sat beside him, the only mourner at the end of his life. 

He was huddled for warmth and covered with newspaper. He’d been dead roughly twelve hours.

One of the cops bent down to examine him, and noticed that something was clutched in one hand like a religious artifact in the grip of a dying Catholic begging God’s forgiveness in his final moments. The cop leaned over to get a better look and frowned. 

It was a small stone dotted with fleck of faded, time worn paint.


End file.
